Sunday, November 21, 2010

Highly Wired, With Mixed Results

The New York Times has an exhaustive piece on digital distractions facing teens, and how they are/are not coping with them. Maybe I am regressing; maybe I have trouble concentrating on just one task. This is one long story.

But read it to get an idea of what our kids are doing when we think they are studying. And also learn about the results of kids' fixation on all things digital. One teacher cited has her class read a book aloud because they don't have the attention span to read unsupervised.

What can we do? Two pieces of advice for parents:
1. Challenge kids to develop a balance of at least 50 percent educational, 50 percent recreational. Have them ask themselves who's in charge, the teen or the technology.
2. Set a good example, or at least a better one than you may be offering now, related to Blackberry use or Facebook time or games.

How do we as parents answer that question of who's in charge? I sure need to show some improvement myself.

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