tech savy parenting

  1. Why Teens Sext: Social Emancipation through Messaging

    By:
    Date Published:
    Tags:
    , , , ,

     Sexting is in the news nearly every day.  We hear about adults getting arrested for sexting minors or minors getting in trouble for sexting each other. I have even seen news articles where parents turn their own children into the authorities when they find out they have been engaging in sexting.  Our world (or at least the media and the law) view sexting among adolescents as child pornography and a legal issue.  This view, however, does not take into account any differences between consensual and non-consensual sexting.  It also does not take into account the fact that sexting among adol…Read More

  2. Hiding from you: Teens love apps they can hide from parents

    By:
    Date Published:
    Tags:
    , , ,

    Where there is a will there is a way.  This is something often heard in our office.  When we are dealing with trying to limit a child’s access to sexual content in the digital world or trying to create barriers for accountability for someone with a sexual addiction, we must always remember this!  This is particularly true when dealing with parental controls and teens.  As soon as a parent installs some sort of parental control or filtering software, many a teen is online looking at YouTube to try to figure out how to uninstall the filter or get around it.  Trust me, within minutes, the …Read More

  3. What’s your Digital Immigration Status?

    By:
    Date Published:
    Tags:
    , , ,

    I was first introduced to the work of Marc Prensky on Digital Immigrants and Digital Natives by Rob Weiss. As we continue to advance in the digital age, this work continues to be relevant. In particular to The New Age of Sex Education, it is very relevant to how parents relate to their more tech savvy children. Mark Prensky is a world renowned expert and leader in the field of education. At the beginning of the 21st century he started writing about changes in students and learning that occur based on technological advances. His work has been extrapolated to other fields and I find it a great…Read More

  4. Teens Want Sex and Relationship Education

    By:
    Date Published:
    Tags:
    , , ,

    Yesterday, a British think tank, IPPR (ippr.org), released preliminary details of a study they conducted involving teenagers’ outlooks on pornography.  The full report will not be released until next week.  At that time, I will have a more in depth analysis. The findings of this study show that online pornography does have an impact on the lives of teenagers.  This is not an imagined impact or an impact suggested by a researcher or parent.  These teens reported that accessing pornography is seen as a typical teenage behavior that became common between 13-15 years old.  Nearly half of th…Read More

  5. Tech Savvy Parenting: Prevention Lessons From Recent Grindr Arrests

    By:
    Date Published:
    Date Modified:
    Tags:
    , ,

    In the past few weeks in the Philadelphia area, where I have my primary therapy practice, there have been a number of arrests related to the hook up application (“app”), Grindr.  On May 1, 2014 a young man was found murdered after meeting someone with whom he connected on the Grindr app.  The person he was meeting for the hook up is a suspect.  Even today, in the news, a man was arrested in Seattle for beating another man he met on Grindr.  The most eye catching story from the Philadelphia area is that of the arrest of a Delaware Deputy Attorney General who is being charged with four c…Read More