Family Tech Blog

Tag: teenagers

Adolescent Neuroscience and Online Safety

You hear it all the time. “Kid’s these days.” or “I just don’t get teenagers.” There’s a myth that our teenagers are becoming more and more selfish and entitled. In reality, however, adolescence is nothing new. William Shakespeare wrote of the craziness of the teen years in The Winters Tale,

I would there were no age between ten and three-and-twenty, or that youth would sleep out the rest; for there is nothing in the between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting.

Teenagers of “the good ol’ days,” while they may have had jobs earlier in life or were thrown into battle before they could legally buy a beer, were still teenagers and dealt with the same issues as our kids do these days. The issues may be highlighted these days by the availability of technology and the hyper-connectedness of our culture. Young people have the entire world at their fingertips and can have face to face type interactions with anyone from anywhere. This is what is new and some recent studies in neuroscience have shed light on some of the biological reasons for a teen’s selfishness, risk taking, and lack of self control. Watch this Ted Talk from neuroscientist Sarah Jayne Blackmore.

What Parents Should Know

You, most of all, should be encouraged that your teen is just like every other teen. Their outbursts and seeming lack of responsibility is largely based on biological reasons. They aren’t stupid or handicapped, they are developing and this affects their behavior, especially online. A book by David Walsh called Why Do They Act That Way? reminds parents of the “use it of lose it” factor of brain development.

During development your brain synapses are growing and they literally have to connect to each other in order for you to learn something. During the development of adolescence if you are not guided into proper choices the synapses in your brain will never connect. This means you could struggle with those types of decisions for the rest of your life. With the advent of social media and our dependency on screens for entertainment this necessity for guidance in healthy behaviour is even more evident.

When your son or daughter tells you that they want a smart phone because all the other kids have one, this is an opportunity to help their brain develop a proper attitude. When your 13-year-old son has been watching YouTube videos for six hours a day setting time limits on your Wi-Fi is helping him practice self-control. When your daughter received a message from somebody she doesn’t know and you see it on your monitoring app and immediately tell her to block that person you’re teaching her how to make good decisions.

Let this post encourage you. You are the mom or dad, and it’s up to you to help your young adult grow to be a contributing member of society. Their biology can get in the way but your guidance can show them how to make the right decisions. Hang in there, keep doing the hard stuff, we’ll keep giving you the info you need.

April 4, 2017
Use Twitter’s New Tools to Protect Your Kids from Trolls

Surprisingly, more of our teenagers are using twitter than you may think. The common attitude among young people is it’s a good place to express yourself even if you’re not sure anyone is listening. Twitter is still a place for teens to go public with their thoughts and opinions. The potential problem with such expression is that there are always those out there wanting to counter your opinion. Often this takes on the form of trolling or bullying. Twitter has released some tools that can help their users filter out some of those trolls and parents need to learn how to use them.

Twitter was in the news last year because of a common theme of internet trolls bullying users, especially celebrities. This caused Twitter to begin working on some new ways to “clean up” what you see in your feed. In the last several days Android and Desktop Twitter users were given the power to block notifications of posts from certain types of accounts, including those who haven’t verified their email address and phone number. The common practice of these trolls is to create fake accounts just for the sole purpose of messing with someone. They don’t verify the account or even include a profile picture, displaying the default bird’s egg logo instead. The new tools developed by Twitter will allow these trolls to be filtered out by simply clicking a couple of checkboxes.

What Parents Should Do

Suicide is now the third leading cause of death among teens and a teen that is cyberbullies is ten times more likely to think about killing themselves. These statistics are a reality in this digital world and are a wake up call that parents need to take the opportunity to filter content in their kids social media feeds seriously. These notification filters can help remove some of the negative and hurtful people that just seem to want to make trouble on Twitter.

Take note of the above picture. If you go to the notifications tab on twitter you’ll see a Settings link on the upper right. Click that link and you should see something similar to this image. It’s pretty straight forward but if you turn off notifications for anyone who hasn’t set up their profile picture, validated their email, or linked their phone number you’ll eliminate many of those troll accounts that cause so much trouble. Remember that Twitter and other social media sites contain “User Generated Content” and therefore, can’t be considered safe for anyone under 17. This means you should keep an eye on what your child or teen seeing on Twitter and have conversations with them about it. As them why they use Twitter. Find out if they’ve ever been teased or bullies on the app. If so, ask what they did about it and who they told. Kids who talk about being bullied are far less likely to take drastic measure as a result of it so open the lines of communication and be present when they need you. You should be that safe place they can come to with any problem. Bullying on social media is no exception.

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March 21, 2017
All You Need to Know About your Kids’ Instagram Spam Account
Sneaky Sneaky

Parents should do their best to be aware of their teenager or child’s activity on social media. Following your kid’s accounts can be a great way to accomplish this and is something we recommend in our workshops and meetings with parents. The problem is that our more sneaky kids know we are doing this and have ways to avoid our ever-watchful eyes. Your child or teen could possibly have set up a “SPAM” account on their Instagram.

A social media spam account is a way for kids to post whatever they’d like online without parental interference. It’s a secret account that they only allow to be followed by the friends they want to know about it. They have a double Instagram life of sorts because they can post things that are parent approved on one account and then post like all of their non supervised friends on the other account. You don’t have to worry, though, there is a way to find that spam account and disable it. I’ll show you how.

First of all you are going to have to be ok with making your child hand over their phone to you unexpectedly. Hopefully you have set a precedence for this kind of thing already so when you say, “Let me have a look at your phone.” there will be no discussion. If they aren’t used to it you may have to remind them who the parent actually is and require them to give it to you. The good thing is that you can find their spam account on Instagram in seconds so you can assure them they’ll get their phone back soon as long as you aren’t upset by what you find.

Here is a slideshow that will show you the few simple steps required to find a spam account if it’s enabled on your child’s Instagram app.
First:

Tap the profile image on the bottom right.

Second:

Tap the account name on the top center.

Third:

You can see all the accounts connected to that app.
What Next?

Hopefully you knew about any accounts you found. However, if you happen to find something you weren’t expecting then my recommendation is to have a serious conversation with your child about what they are posting that they feel they need to hide from you. Ask them what healthy social media use should look like and try to come up with an agreement on how to accomplish these healthy habits in your family. Don’t back down during these conversations and if you found anything that requires drastic action such as counseling or a loss of privilege then take that action as soon as possible.

Remember that these steps are about your child’s safety and protection. We know that our teens should be given a level of freedom within boundaries in order for them to build healthy habits but betrayal of your trust with a secret “SPAM” acc0unt should be taken very seriously. They may hate you for it now but someday they’ll understand and they’ll be grateful then. Just hang in there.
February 16, 2017