I recently heard part of a lecture regarding teens and how technology poses new challenges for parenting. Being a full time student minister I tried to take good notes knowing that I wanted to blog it. Unfortunately I forgot to write down the speaker’s name. I say that because even though I will expound on the points he made I didn’t come up with the points on my own. Everything he said was extremely good and very worthy of being passed on to you.
Some people say that parents shouldn’t “snoop” or research what their teens are doing in their private lives. They believe that parents should implicitly trust their teens to make wise choices until they have good reason to believe otherwise. I wholeheartedly disagree. Trust is earned, not given.
“It is not impossible to lead your teen in making wise decisions”
I firmly believe that the #1 challenge teens face today is making wise choices; especially regarding technology. Teens are not little adults, they’re kids … kids with raging hormones and they need to be treated as such. Granted, they can handle more responsibility than your average second grader but they’re not ready to handle the adult world on their own yet. We adults MUST come alongside teens, watching — closely at times — what they do and correcting them where they go astray.
Current technology adds a new, and somewhat challenging, dimension to parenting today’s teens. Still, no matter how monumental the task may seem it is not impossible to lead your teen in making wise decisions regarding this technology.
- Be crystal clear regarding what web sites are off limits to your teen. You’ve got to be specific here. Name names of web sites, chat rooms, forums and blogs. Then discuss the consequences of breaking the rules. Personally I recommend you write out a physical contract spelling out the rules as well as the consequences which you and your teen will sign. That way if they break the contract you have something concrete to go back to.
- Consequences for breaking the contract should hurt. Each teen is different in this area. If your teen seems “addicted” to their cell phone then take that away for a long time. If they love to mess around on Myspace then cut that off for a few weeks. If they blog, you guessed it, nip it. Consequences in the adult world can be brutal, don’t mislead your teen by making their consequences laughable.
- Take the time to learn about the digital devices your teen uses. Is your teen a cell phone nut? Do the text message all day long? Then you should know how to check their recently received calls and messages and you should tell them that you’re going to do it. Does your teen have a Myspace or blog? Then you should read their Myspace or blog regularly. It’s important here that you check not only what they write but what they link to. Links they put on their site can give you a lot of insight into where they spend their time online. Also investigate the sites of the people in your teens online “network.”
- Remind your teen that the Internet is a public arena. We preach a lot to teens about the dangers of online predators and rightfully so. But we also need to remind them that college admissions offices and potential employers are now regularly researching people online before accepting or hiring them. Teens need to be warned that posting pictures or essays that put them in a negative light can have far-reaching consequences.
- Talk to your teen about the nature of information on the Net. Not everything they see or read is accurate or trustworthy.
- Use technology to help monitor your teen. (I love this idea, by the way.) Does your teen like to text message? Then why not use text messaging to keep tabs on what your teen is up to? If they have a camera phone and you expect them to be at a football game with their friends why not tell them to picture-message you a shot of them with their friends in the stands? Technology isn’t evil, find ways to make it work FOR you.
- If your teen has slipped up and made unwise choices regarding the Internet then you should feel justified in keeping a VERY close watch on everything they do online. I suggest X3 Watch. It’s put out by XXXchurch and I personally use it on both my home and work computers just to remove any suspicion from my wife’s mind about my online activity. What it does is it records EVERY web site that individual computer visits and the time and date it goes there. The program then emails that list to a predefined email address of your choice. I have it send the email directly to my wife. Clearing caches and histories on the browser won’t erase the memory of X3 Watch. Oh, and if the program is manually shut down it records that too. When you’re serious about online accountability you will get X3 Watch.
- Last, but not least, talk to other parents of teens about what they do to keep tabs on their kids. You might get some new ideas I haven’t written here and who knows, you might give them some ideas too.
