Digital Citizenship

How do you raise a technology savvy kid who isn’t staring at a screen all the time? That’s the subject of a very straightforward article on the PopSugar site filled with real world suggestions from Devorah Heitner, author of Screenwise: Helping Kids Thrive (and Survive) in their Digital World and the blog RaisingDigitalNatives.com.

Her suggestions include being a technology role model, establishing screen –free zones and, uniquely, teaching kids to apologize in person to reinforce that what happens anonymously online translates to the offline world as well.

The average age kids get their first smartphone today is approximately 10 years old. In 2012, the average age was 12, leading some people to believe that age will continue to get younger. Although many parents feel their young children are ready for the responsibility of a smartphone, experts say to keep in mind a smartphone gives them access to everything, often outside of parental supervision. For a broader discussion of the issue, see What’s the Right Age for a Child to Get a Smartphone? on The New York Times site.

The speed at which teens adopt and master new social networks and apps can be dizzying, and it can make it difficult for parents to respond when a child reports being bullied on a platform that parents are not familiar with. One thing to stay aware of is the growing swarm of anonymous messaging apps like Whisper, After School, and Yik Yak.  This extensive list of ways to report problematic behavior on various social networks and apps is also useful if you need to report an incident.

Twitter recently addressed longtime complaints by banning certain users and making its exclusive "verified status" option to be more openly available. Verified accounts include those maintained by public figures and organizations in music, TV, film, fashion, government, politics, religion, journalism, media, sports, business, and other key interest areas. The accounts have a blue checkmark next to the user's name to show the user or organization has been vetted by Twitter and the user's phone number and email address are legitimate.

This action was a direct result of the abuse that "Ghostbusters" actress Leslie Jones received from Milo Yiannopoulos, a tech editor at Breitbart.com who has been suspended in the past for violating Twitter's code of conduct. Yiannopoulos incited his followers to bombard Jones with tweets criticizing the "Ghostbusters" new release that features all-female leads. Digital rights activists and victims of online abuse have long called for more proactive solutions that would give users means to address harassment more quickly without waiting for a response from the site's complaint department, or to ban repeat offenders who switch accounts.

The concept of plagiarism, especially in the digital age, has come sharply into focus after Melania Trump’s recent incident with a plagiarized speech. As educators would call it, this is a teachable moment and it might be a good idea to talk to your kids about why plagiarism is bad and how to avoid it. Some kids might not think it is such a big deal when they see someone on the national scene plagiarize (without visible consequences even though it created a controversy), and might be tempted to try it too. The spotlight on this issue might have teachers hypersensitive to plagiarism this school year, so it is important to stress the severity of it with your children.

If someone locked down your pacemaker what would you pay to regain control? What about paying a hacker to relinquish control of a plane’s cockpit? This is the future of ransomware writes Carl Herberger of Radware, a security solutions company. He also contends that if companies and individuals continue to pay hackers who lock down their computers with ransomware, they will continue to be attacked. Instead of paying, Herberger writes, those who "take steps to be aware of attacks and raise the proper defenses and fail-safes are less likely to be targets" and suggests some ideas for taking those kinds of precautions.

Despite studies showing women are just as good as men in video games and polls revealing nearly half of women play such games, the belief persists that the gaming world is for men. Experts say such attitudes could discourage girls from pursuing careers in science, technology, engineering and math fields.

In an interview with National Public Radio Sonia Livingstone, a professor of social psychology at the London School of Economics and Political Science says parents need to worry less about whether they have said all the “right” things to their kids about the dangers of technology. Instead, she says, they need to be more concerned about whether their child can come to them and talk about what “they are doing and or their worries on the internet.” Livingstone goes on to describe that kind of approach and give tips on how to create that kind of relationship with your child. This scenario makes a lot of sense since the digital world changes daily and it is nearly impossible for parents to keep up.

Recently, Facebook started rolling out a beta version of a new feature in their Messenger app that they're calling "secret conversations." Basically, it is end-to-end encrypted messaging that, in theory, doesn't allow anyone — not even Facebook — to intercept the messages. It's Facebook's attempt to compete with other messaging apps like WhatsApp, which provides a very high level of security and is attractive to global audiences, especially young people.

At first, the feature will only be available to a small percentage of users for testing, but everyone else should get it in the late summer or early fall. Of course, there's a catch: users will have to "opt-in" to the service, meaning for most people, Facebook will still be able to rifle through your info and deliver those personalized ads which sometimes come across as kind of creepy. It is also be interesting to see if these “secret conversations” play a part in cyberbullying and sexting.

If you have kids you probably already know what Pokemon Go is – the hottest new virtual reality app – but if not, it is one of those things you are going to need to know about as “up-to-date” parents. Of course there are also going to be some unintended consequences as well, as there always are with a new tech craze. For starters, make sure you download the correct version of the game and make sure all permissions are set the way you want them to be. This app is a lesson in Privacy Issues 101 despite its popularity. One interesting sidelight – colleges are using the Pokemon Go game to recruit students by posting pictures on social media of Pokemon characters at sites around their campuses.