technology

articles

• Porn, children and the internet – a case of hide and seek?
• Fun educational internet sites for kids
• Tweeting parents beware!
• When is your child ready for a cell phone?
• Kids and technology – good or bad?
• Are you raising a technological wizard or a creative, imaginative thinker?
• Limit TV Time with a Token System
• The Smartphone Monster
• To Wii or not to Wii, that is the question…

William Bird is director of Media Monitoring Africa an Ashoka and Linc fellow.  He has been monitoring the media for 16 years working on children and media issues for 12.  He recently presented at the 12th South African Professional Society on the Abuse of Children (SAPSAC) Conference on Online Victimisation of Children. William is also the father of two young boys.

We live in a world that is radically different to the world we grew up in, more so if you’re over the age of 30.  I’m not talking about all the changes in technology, or how our country has changed, I’m talking about the explosion of information we are exposed to and overloaded with.  One of the most disturbing effects of this overload is the likelihood that your child will be exposed to pornography and because most of us haven’t prepared them for it, they won’t know how to deal with it.

Why is your child likely to see pornography?

Extremely widespread access to social media chat rooms and to the internet via cell phones means that as parents it becomes increasingly difficult to regulate what our children access and when. Often they are exposed to sexual content accidentally via an MMS from a friend, an email, a link or on any of the social media sites.  Often such content is sent from other children.

When sex is forbidden and never discussed, but at the same time the messages conveyed via popular songs, music videos etc say its fun and stimulating, children’s curiosity can lead them to search for answers via a cell phone without anyone ever knowing. At some schools, we are aware that students often exchange addresses of porn sites with each other or in more extreme cases use their phones to film each other and then distribute these clips.

What can you do as a parent?

For younger children filters, passwords and adult supervision are highly recommended but with older kids  it ‘s much more complicated

Most children, 12yrs and older will know a nerd, who with a few instructive clicks can bypass any nanny security.  And on cell phones there is close to no protection at all. This age group needs to know how to distinguish what is appropriate and what isn’t.  They need critical media literacy skills, and to self regulate.   They also need parents who talk to them about sex and love and how pornography distorts what is real.

We need to explain that:

Parents who pretend it isn’t there or think children will never be exposed are just creating distance between their child’s reality and themselves.  The moment that distance gets bigger, children keep bigger secrets, the less communication the more remains unsaid and unknown and that is when children become more vulnerable to sexual exploitation.

One last thing you can do, is learn how to use a cell phone – beyond dial and sms, ask your child or have a tech party with your friends and invite a nerd.

Before I end off, I need to make three key points.  Exposing a child to porn is a criminal offence under the Film and Publications Act.  Also any porn that has any kind of portrayal of children engaged in sex is also a criminal offence.  So any of you who get your kicks watching children in porn – know that you are actively participating in child abuse.  Don’t do it.  If you know someone who is or has- report them to the police.  Thirdly, I think we are hopelessly behind in our policy and child protection in those instances where children are exposed to sexual content that they have not sought out but that is the subject of another article.

by Mandi  Holtshausen, entrepreneur, passionate homeschooling mom to 2 precious girls, visit her blog for a personal insight into their homeschooling  journey.  Follow her on twitter@HomeschoolingSA.   Click here for more information about homeschooling.

The internet is a wonderful source of education and entertainment for our children.  Learning can be fun with interactive games and puzzles covering mathematics, science, spelling and topics on the fascinating world around us.  Although, just like we need to protect our children from bad elements on TV, we need to be cautious and protect our children from the bad side of the Internet.  This can be achieved by installing a good family friendly filter like K9 Web Protection , which is free, on our computers.

Furthermore, we need to educate our children about how to use the internet in a safe manner; explaining the dangers that exist.   I heard of a situation where a young boy wanted to check his new email account and typed in the wrong address.  He typed “male” instead of “mail” and the images that popped up on the screen were of a pornographic nature. Now these images are embedded in his mind forever, there is no erasing it and what has been done is irreversible.  Children are naturally curious about the world around them and we need to focus that curiosity in the right direction.

Here is a brief list of websites that my children and I have found to be fun and educational at the same time:

www.kids.discovery.com Fun games, puzzles and activities about animals, myths, space etc.  Follow the link on this site called YUCKY and play whack-a-roach and find out gross and amazing info about your body.

www.worldmathsday.com A fantastic site where your child can play math related games.  On World Mathematics Day they can compete against children around the world. At the end of the event they receive a certificate for all their hard work of each year trying to break the world record.

www.worldspellingday.com This works on the same concept but with spelling games.  Speakers or headphones are needed.

www.kidshealth.com This site is friendly to kids, teens and parents.  It has information about how the body works with helpful advice.  A great homework helper.  They also have a newsletter to subscribe to.

www.nationalgeographic.com Fun facts and interactive games like “African Adventures” and “Plan it Green”.  They also have a section for much younger kids, puzzles, coloring book and interactive “Plant a Garden” and “Learn to Share”.

www.dltk-kids.com Fun printable children’s crafts, coloring pages and holiday projects.

Too much time on the Internet is not recommended. I believe that only an hour of television or computer time should be allowed every day. Children should play and the development of gross motor skills are just as important.

Please share fun educational sites you have found for your kids with us.

by Tanya Kovarsky, the editor of Living & Loving magazine, mom to Max, and a fan of running, baking, reading and iPads. Find her on Twitter (@TanyaKovarsky) or her blog.

For every word, comment, tweet, blog post and Facebook status I put out there, I consider that my son, who is only 20 months old and cannot say internet let alone type the word, could and might one day read what I’ve written. I’ve been tempted to swear a lot and slag people off, and complain and be rude on the internet. But then I ask myself if I’d be proud for my child to one day read what I’ve written, and that is the ultimate deciding factor before I hit the “send” button. And I don’t always get it right. A certain tweet of mine once got me in the bird poo, and it was a lesson that came with some tears but a resolution that I’d try not to do it again.

I sometimes watch bemused and shocked how moms slag off their partners, their kids, their teachers and their lives. I appreciate and love the fact that the web gives us freedom and a voice, but I think as parents we need to be cautious and set a fairly decent example. I don’t want my child to think it’s okay to  be malicious, impatient, intolerant and unable to confront people face to face, which is why I’ll do my best not to act like that not only in front of him, but through what I put out on the web. And you might argue that by the time my son can read, the tweets and Facebook comments will be long deleted into cyberspace, but I believe we leave big imprints on the way, and I’d rather err on the side of cyber caution (or neurosis, if you will). Either way, it’s a good exercise in guarding my tongue (or my finger), and remembering that good manners do start at home and from my work laptop, Macbook, iPad and iPhone.

by Jude Foulston,  new mom, wife, entrepreneur,  friend and crafter who’s loving the challenge of trying to  keep it all together on a daily basis. She works for  TomorrowToday and is  the creator of Jamtin– an online directory for all things handmade.

I realize that there are situations where it’s convenient for kids to have cell phones but we must remember that with this convenience comes responsibility. Does the convenience of having a cell phone positively out weigh the risks that phones expose these kids to?

“When you hand kids phones today, you’re giving them powerful communications and production tools. They can create text, images, and videos that can be widely distributed and uploaded to Web sites. They can broadcast their status and their location. They can download just about everything in the world. If you think your children’s technological savvy is greater than their ability to use it wisely, pay attention to the gap. Times may have changed, but parenting hasn’t. We’re still the parents. And it’s our job to say “no, not yet.”  (Source: http://www.commonsensemedia.org.)

I do think it’s important to ask what the phone is being used for – if it is to have contact with a handful of people then are you limiting the airtime per month, and checking their internet access? If it’s going to be used as a gaming platform then certainly limit airtime and make it known that the phone is meant as a gaming platform and nothing else. There’s no taking back the experience when your 11 year old is exposed to completely unsuitable adult content via his phone, so whatever the reason, make sure these rules are adhered to and that you are comfortable enough with the handset so that you can monitor the activity on the phone on a regular basis.

Speaking of Adult Content Management – did you know that Facebook has an age limit of 13 years? According to recent SA research, 50% of the Generation Y that were interviewed (average age of 18) use Facebook as a search engine. What you use Facebook for and what your 13 year old use it for could be two different scenarios.

Which leads me onto the next question – perhaps the question isn’t whether your kids are ready for the responsibility that being exposed to the internet brings, but more importantly is how are you teaching your children to interact in this space? What responsibility are you, the parent, taking on? Yes, at times it seems that technology is part of these kids DNA and it’s hard to believe you can teach them new stuff in this space, but just as you would teach your children how to interact on a social level, not to speak to strangers, etc, you should also be teaching kids the same principles in the online space.

Connect with your kids here, teach them, get comfortable in their space. Beat them at their own games, and hopefully with more knowledge and information sharing between families the technology and content that is out there won’t be so scary for all of us.

by Karen Dyke who works in advertising in Johannesburg, is married to a Clinical Psychologist and has 2 remarkably well-adjusted children. She has survived mothering teenagers. This may or may not be due to said Clinical Psychologist’s fabulous skills.  Visit her blog

I remember the first time I saw the video “Shift happens” and the enormous impact it had on me and how I thought about my children’s future. If you haven’t seen it, do yourself a favour – the line about China having more honors kids than America has kids, puts things into perspective.

So what does this have to do with the latest MXit scare, or Facebook suicide?  How concerned should we be about our kids’ access to social media?

When my kids were little the debate was around how bad television would be for their development. They would become psychopathic overweight hermits, lacking in basic social skills if I allowed them to watch more than x supervised minutes a day. The scare-mongers who spoke about satanic music when I was a teenager now had their narrow minds firmly fixed on the evil box.

Before that it was about the dangers of letting your kids read comics instead of pre-approved literary masterpieces. Or listen to the evil radio under the covers at night. Or play pop music. Or educating your daughters.

The point is that the world changes. We grow up in a certain way and then look back in fondness at the freedom we enjoyed. We forget about the downside – like institutionalized corporal punishment masquerading as discipline in schools. With change comes fear and a desire to control our children’s lives as much as possible. Protect them from what we ourselves don’t understand.

Because I grew up in Zambia I had access to television. I watched cartoons, but I also watched the moon landing. So TV was not a new-fangled concept capable of damaging their fragile little minds. In the beginning I watched with them, explaining things that I thought needed explanation. As they grew they needed less supervision. Much like going to friends’ birthday parties or playing on the jungle gym.

The bottom line is always going to be how you manage their access and how you empower them to deal with potentially harmful situations. The key is age-appropriate access and yes, it is a pain in the neck to supervise and manage, just like car seats and seatbelts.

As they grow older they learn about the dangers (from you, hopefully) but also the fun. I “friended” my children on Facebook early on – I didn’t understand it, but wanted to see what it was about.  I contacted Mxit and spoke to them – they had really good tips for parents and answered numerous questions. I’m still friends with them on Facebook; I’m friends with some of their friends too. Sometimes I chat to them about their online profiles and the potential harm they could do themselves with inappropriate comments, photos or postings. But mostly I feel privileged to be part of their lives. I try to keep an open mind about what they post – the times they are indeed a-changing.

There be dragons out there and they will use new channels. The raincoated-paedophile with the sweets in the park hasn’t gone away. Best we teach our children well.

by Lindsay Grubb, wife & mom to a nearly 3 yr old daughter and owner of L Communications where she helps you get the right message across to the right audience. Follow her on Twitter and LinkedIn

A few weeks ago I had a major deadline. It was 10pm and I still had to write a 2800 word article that night. Ciara didn’t want to go to sleep. I pulled out my laptop and sat on my bed, trying to work while she entertained herself, waiting for her to fall asleep. My plan failed. She became excited and rushed off to fetch her laptop and her “homework” book. She then proceeded to work next to mommy, but it’s hard to write when you have “Mary had a Little Lamb”, playing over and over through her laptop and your head.

At almost three, she knows what a cell phone is and comes running with it when it rings so I can answer it.

Yesterday she told me to put down my phone and play with her. It made me realise how addicted I have become to technology, even outside working hours.

What are we teaching our children? It is true, that in this age of information, it has become critical to teach our young ones computer literacy. They need to know how to use MS Office, email and the internet, but are our children losing out on the carefree childhood we experienced?  As a child I spent all my time outside, playing with my friends, riding my bike, climbing trees and jungle gyms, scraping my knees more than once.  Isn’t that something we should be encouraging in our children?

In a world where technology is progressing rapidly, and the majority of children know more than we do about computers, cell phones, iPods, Nintendo’s and Playstation’s, how do we know when it’s the right time to introduce technology to our children?

There really is no right or wrong answer here. I think it’s a case of balance. It’s necessary to have our children prepared, but we need to help them to embrace their spirit of adventure and encourage a vivid imagination.

In South Africa our children are scoring a C- on their “Healthy Kids Report Card”. One in three children watches more than three hours of TV per day. Our children are at risk to predators on their cell phones on programmes MXit, and they’re putting out too much personal information on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

I think a good time to introduce technology to our children, is when they have a clear understanding of the responsibility and consequences linked to its usage. Online consensus through a number of different articles on the topic seems to be that eight years old is a safe time, but this means they’re not computer literate when they go to school, which seems necessary these days, so I’m not entirely sure.

What do you think is the best age for introducing your children to technology and should we be leading by example and limiting our usage or is it more of a “do as I say and not as I do” situation?

Copyright © Lindsay Grubb 2011 – All rights reserved

by Sine Thieme, a writer and mother of four who is new to South Africa and busy chronicling her experiences on her blog, Joburg Expat.

“If your children own the job of managing their TV time, they will quickly learn how to budget and maximize their fun.”

When we lived in the US, there was an annual campaign – a movement of sorts – called “National TV Turnoff Week.” I remember feeling that while turning TVs off for an entire week is a wonderful idea, there should be a plan for the rest of the year as well. But that’s the hard part. If you’re like me, you hate always saying no to “Mom, can I watch TV?”

We found a way around that by using a TV token system.

This is how it worked in our family: Every week, each of our children received one “TV token” to watch a 30-minute show. Everyone was allowed to watch TV when a token was used, giving our four kids a total of two hours of TV privileges for the week. Sounds impossible? Believe me, you will be amazed how well it works, especially if you start when your children are young. We used it for many years and now the kids are so well trained we don’t need tokens anymore.

If your limit is higher than what we used, just issue more tokens, or include other habits you might want to limit, such as video and computer games (when my daughter was little, I even temporarily introduced “mommy, you get me dressed” tokens!). Or put them all into one category called “screen time.” Whichever way you choose, your kids will relish the freedom of watching TV or playing xBox games at a time of their choosing, and you’ll be happy to have enforced a limit. All without any debate other than “Do you have a token?”

The reason tokens work well is that they shift the responsibility of tracking TV time from you to your kids. Just be careful you don’t impose new conditions, such as “after you’ve cleaned your room” or you will quickly open the door to new debates. If your children own the job of managing their TV time, they will quickly learn how to budget and maximize their fun.

You might think it’s impossible to impose such limits on your family, but trust me, it works! And consider the payoff. You’ll be astonished how much your kids will read or how many puzzles and board games they will dig up in their newly-found spare time! So get out your scissors, cut some colorful circles, and you’ll find yourself eagerly awaiting the next “Mom, can I watch TV?”

By Jayshree Sita, mom to 2 gorgeous, lively kids, Amishka 9yrs and Vishen  5yrs.  She traded the glamorous life of a chartered accountant to become a teacher. She’s also an aspiring writer and artist who is passionate about self-development and keeping her family happy.

I am a stay at home mom with many interests and passions, but my primary focus is to keep my family balanced, happy and healthy. I have a Smartphone which I use all the time, and find very helpful but also very distracting.  I love my calendar (since my husband’s and kid’s diaries are super complicated) and I love the camera – great for taking spontaneous pics  all the time. My kids seem to love the games on it and I can actually get a quick response from my busy corporate husband on the Smartphone messenger when I need it.  I can even update my Facebook whenever I like. So it is a very cool, fun and useful tool for me to have.

So at the beginning, I enjoyed the efficiency and diversity of applications that I had at my disposal 24/7. But then I realised that I was getting hooked into a world that always seemed in a hurry and always took my attention away from the present moment. I may have been watching my daughter’s netball match when an sms popped up. It really could wait, but the beep and the light caught my attention and before I knew it I was frantically typing my reply and missed a netball goal.

Between the e-mail and the sms’s, the actual phone and the Facebook alerts….I kept jumping between scenarios, which was draining my energy and certainly not allowing me to feel the reward of spending time focusing and concentrating on one goal/activity with a single mindedness that leads to excellence and peace and calm.

My kids complain when they want my attention and I’m absorbed in my Smartphone.

I told them it was a monster who had captured me in its long tentacles and they had to wrench me free…they laughed, enjoying the picture in their minds and imagining themselves real heroes who would save their Mummy.

So, are you a target of the Monster?

Read it and decide for yourself….that’s if you can put your Smartphone down for 5 minutes.

The Smartphone Monster

She’s smooth and she’s sleek
Robed in an elegant black dress
And jewelled in dazzling diamonds
She waits, she watches, she sings, she smiles

With hypnotic powers
That dazzle and delight
She draws you into her world
Be it daytime or night
She lures you, tempts you
catches you, grabs you
traps you & squeezes you,

You’re running in her world
your e-mails are climbing
Your messages ‘pinging’
Your calender’s buzzing
Your camera’s rolling
Your music’s pumping
Your facebook’s flashing
Your virtual world is rushing by
Alive and Exciting
But a little bit cold
And a little bit shallow

When she beckons your fingers get curled
Your back gets hunched
And like a lovesick fool
You’re unable to avert your eyes from her gaze

She plays the loyal servant
Who never leaves your side

Yet, bit by byte , she enslaves you
Till the ones you love, the ‘Real’ people
Need to ask her permission to access you

Sad, but true
The Smartphone Monster is out to get you
Can you Escape?

She clings to to your ear
Like a super sucky glue
Is that a new age earring?
Or are you tagged by the Smartphone Goddess
Who sits high up in the Universe
And controls little unsuspecting e-humans
With digital sounds and semi-words
Which have conquered and destroyed  the beauty of the English language
And the simple pleasure of long deep conversations

Of course she’s fun, she’s fabulous, she’s smart, she’s sexy
And you think she’s a super helpful efficient friend
But is she waiting at your fingertips,
Or are you waiting at hers?

Kerry Haggard is a writer, editor, wife and mother to the two most gorgeous boys that ever there were. One day when she grows up she hopes to be a real geek, but for now, she’s happy to sit and watch her husband excel at that…

 Our home is blessed with more technology than most, thanks to my husband’s job as publisher of a consumer magazine (www.connect.co.za), and this has opened a Pandora’s box of sorts in our home. We are probably more exposed than most to different gaming consoles (yes, we have a PS3, a Wii and an Xbox 360), not to mention more computers per capita than most multinational corporations. And we have two boys (Daniel aged 4 and a half and Matthew, 20 months)  whose eyes have lit up at the sight of anything with a whirring noise and a flashing light since they were old enough to sit up and take notice.

There are many who would say that there is time enough for technology when my boys are older – but then there’s that age-old thing of little boys wanting to do what their daddies do.  Some people play sport, others read – my husband ‘does’ computers, whether that’s building them, rebuilding them, or playing various games on them.  Daniel’s playschool offers computer classes, which are mostly around co-ordination and mouse-skills, and his reports from these have always come back with a string of ‘excellents’.

So, is there a difference between learning computer skills (which we all need – were you also one of those that mocked the boys that took typing lessons in the 80s?) and playing console games, which some may see as technology baby-sitters for the lazy parent?

I would say it depends on the console and the game. Matthew is too little to play still, but watches his brother’s every move when he plays on the Wii or on his PC – and Daniel is a sensitive soul who takes everything to heart. This is why we have no ‘first-person shooter’ games, or any game that has violence of any sort in it – apart from the fencing game in Wii Sports Island.

On the Wii, Daniel plays table tennis (and wins nearly every time, using strategic placement of the ball when he ‘hits’ it), 100 pin bowling (where he lines up the ball with the pins, and scores a strike nearly every time), and archery  (which requires careful co-ordination, using both hands). He cannot read, but he can navigate his way around a set of Wii games better than I can – he has responded to its intuitiveness and has figured things out for himself.

On his PC, he plays a variety of games that teach him cognitive and recognition skills, and that throw in a bit of history and geography as well.

Yes, my child does have a lot of ‘screen’ time, but he also does (old fashioned ) puzzles quickly and accurately. His hand-eye co-ordination is such that he seldom misses a ball with his cricket bat, and he has a general knowledge that is well beyond his age.

Are computers and consoles a substitute for good parenting? No, they’re definitely not. But they’re a part of our (admittedly privileged) life, and will continue to be so, more and more, as our children grow up. Making them comfortable with technology, and giving them the confidence to navigate their way around it, is equipping them with skills our parents hadn’t even thought of when we were kids.

It is about striking a balance though – Daniel can only play one session of Wii in a day, and he can only play every second day. I think we’re getting the balance right. At bed time the other night, my heart melted when I was told, “Mom, I love you more than everything. I even love you more than Wii.”