Table of Contents
"Children are like wet cement. Whatever falls on them makes an impression." — Haim Ginott
Parenting has been hard throughout human history. No matter whether you are in the stone age or the technology era, engaging and building a strong relationship with kids is always challenging.
But, in this digital era, these challenges have become unique. Smartphones, the internet, and tech tools have entered into every phase of our lives. Educational Institutes, playing areas, offices, hotels, and homes have changed because of digital technology. It means that the internet is in every aspect of a child’s life and parents have to do effective digital parenting to guide their kid. What challenges could you face in digital parenting and how could you overcome them? Let's discuss it in this blog.
Negative Aspects of Technology in the Parenting
"Raising a child is like planting a seed and watching it grow into a beautiful flower." — Lisa Wingate
Parents are facing a lot of challenges and hurdles in upbringing their kids due to the negative side of technology. What are these negative aspects? Let’s discuss them.
Negative Content: Pornography and violent content on social media is easily accessible. Adolescents fall into the trap of this negative digital content that could compromise their moral values and distract them from the purpose of their lives.
Privacy Issues: Research has shown that younger generations sign up on different websites without reading the privacy rules. They share their personal information carelessly because adolescents do not fully understand the complexities and importance of privacy rules. This could make them a victim of different cyber crimes.
Cyberbullying: Kids mostly don't understand moral values. So, when a smartphone is in their hand and someone is making fun of other people, they can also contribute to it for adventure or fun. They can start cyberbullying. Or, they can become a victim of cyberbullying. If they become victims, they can suffer from various mental issues.
These challenges don't mean that technology has no benefit for kids or parents.
Benefits of Technology in Digital Parenting
Kids can have access to various kinds of information due to technology. There are various kid-friendly YouTube channels and educational websites on the internet. These are helping parents teach various soft skills and academic skills to their children so that they can prosper in their lives.
For example, Duolingo is a language learning platform that could teach different kinds of languages to your kids. Mathly app could help children in learning various concepts of Maths. MOOC platforms could help them in self-directed learning.
Augmented and virtual reality technology is helping kids explore different cultures and visit various places from the comfort of their homes. This could build tolerance toward different cultures and people of various backgrounds.
For example, Mel Science is the website where you can subscribe and get a science kit on your doorstep. The kit contains different experiments along with gadgets of virtual or augmented reality that teach any specific concept of STEM.
Moreover, parents could work from home or automate a lot of their office tasks so that they could spend some quality time with their kids. Various management and productivity tools could help parents complete their job work within a specific time frame. The rest of the time they could spend with their children.
To get these benefits, parents have to take some steps to establish healthy tech boundaries in their homes.
Strategies to Establish Healthy Tech Boundaries
“The digital world is not a separate realm; it’s an integral part of our children’s lives. As parents, our role is to guide them through this landscape, empowering them to be responsible, ethical, and resilient digital citizens.” – Dr. Emily Wilkins, Digital Parenting Expert
The parent’s role is to make sure that kids are enjoying technology’s benefits and are successfully avoiding its harmful impacts. So, they should implement these rules in their homes:
Setting Limits on Screen Time
Excessive screen time could cause mental and physical health issues to your kids. Using a screen before bedtime could impact the quality of their sleep. Moreover, your kid could become obsessed with digital devices, which could lead to unhealthy attitudes.
So, you should set some screen time limits for your children. Design specific tech-free zones where your kids or family members can't use any digital device. It could be a dining table or a family room. Moreover, set the screen time limit for your kids. They can watch the screen for a specific number of hours in a day.
You can monitor their screen time with the help of different parental control apps. Google Family Link, Norton Family, Net Nanny, and Screen Time are some apps for this purpose.
Be a Model
"Children learn more from what you are than what you teach." — W.E.B. DuBois
Research suggests that parental behaviors have a stronger impact on children’s online habits than rules. Consistency between parental digital behaviors and their rules could help kids avoid the impulsive use of screens. So, if you are setting rules and limiting the screen time for your kids, you should also follow your rules.
Suppose you have asked your kid not to use the smartphone on the dining table but you are using it while taking your meals. This behavior will give a negative message to your children, and they will never follow your screen time rules. So, be a role model for them.
Teaching Digital Literacy
Your kids are a product of different media industries. There are various platforms and content that are misleading or could distract kids from their goals. So, you should teach various digital literacy skills to your children.
Tell them the importance of privacy and safety when signing up for any website, and build their habit of reading the rules and regulations of any platform before agreeing to them. Help them in analyzing online information critically and discriminate between credible and non-credible sources.
You should develop persuasive techniques so that kids can set digital boundaries and remain protected from cyberbullying and other cyber crimes.
Setting Rules about Internet Content
To avoid porn and other harmful content, you should set various rules about internet content consumption from the beginning. Various educational platforms are fun to use and build literacy skills in kids. For example, FreeSchool is a popular educational YouTube channel for kids. AdventureAI is also an amazing platform for children. So, you should promote these types of educational digital content among your kids. Make sure they are following educational and fun social media pages rather than other kinds.
Encourage Diverse Activities
"To be in your children's memories tomorrow, you have to be in their lives today." — Barbara Johnson
As a parent, you should be available for your kids to enhance their well-being. For this, you should introduce diverse activities into your children’s lives that are screen-free. Spend a day with your kids where they can play in nature and explore the world around them. Introduce exciting activities and physical games in their lives to enhance their critical thinking and other soft skills.
Conclusion
"Parenthood is a sacred privilege, a profound responsibility, and a boundless wellspring of unconditional love that knows no bounds." — Michael Josephson
In short, digital parenting has a lot of challenges and, as a parent, you have to overcome them for the well-being of your child. There are different ways through which you could build healthy tech boundaries so that your children can flourish in this digital era. You must have known about these strategies in this blog so implement them today.
Comments are closed.