As a children's specialist, there are three questions I wish people asked more:
How do I encourage my child to read?
How do I determine/teach my child what is a good resource and what isn't?
and
What kind of data is being collected about me when I use social media?
The first question should be asked more because a lot of parents come in with preconceived notions of what counts as reading or what sorts of things their children should be reading and are then mystified when the kid doesn't want to read outside of school.
The second needs to be asked more because I see a lot of adults coming in without anything resembling the skills they need to find work, avoid scams, and take care of the basic tasks of creating, saving, uploading, and attaching documents. Which means they're entirely unsuited to the parts of parenting that involve helping their kids evaluate colleges, jobs, and research assignments. And the schools, bless them, are trying, but can't provide all of the necessary instruction on how to evaluate sources in the real world.
The third question is one that teens actually have a leg up on their parents regarding privacy settings and stegeanography (I think that's the right term for "hiding in plain sight".) Even so, kids and parents both need the equipment to be able to understand what sort of data is being collected from them and how it's being used, as well as the issues associated with having other prior tagging you and providing data about you to the social media companies. Plus, kids and parents need to have discussions about what a reasonable expectation of privacy is regarding social media, and how far parents get to intrude into the lives of their children.
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Date: 2013-07-17 06:17 pm (UTC)The first question should be asked more because a lot of parents come in with preconceived notions of what counts as reading or what sorts of things their children should be reading and are then mystified when the kid doesn't want to read outside of school.
The second needs to be asked more because I see a lot of adults coming in without anything resembling the skills they need to find work, avoid scams, and take care of the basic tasks of creating, saving, uploading, and attaching documents. Which means they're entirely unsuited to the parts of parenting that involve helping their kids evaluate colleges, jobs, and research assignments. And the schools, bless them, are trying, but can't provide all of the necessary instruction on how to evaluate sources in the real world.
The third question is one that teens actually have a leg up on their parents regarding privacy settings and stegeanography (I think that's the right term for "hiding in plain sight".) Even so, kids and parents both need the equipment to be able to understand what sort of data is being collected from them and how it's being used, as well as the issues associated with having other prior tagging you and providing data about you to the social media companies. Plus, kids and parents need to have discussions about what a reasonable expectation of privacy is regarding social media, and how far parents get to intrude into the lives of their children.