Their Own Devices

Parents today are raising children in a new digital environment and medical research demonstrates that the use of interactive digital technology affects kids’ behavior and development. Parents need to be conscious of exactly how kids are changed by screens. On this episode, Marc and David explore how digital technologies influence kids with one of the senior-most experts in this field, Dr...

The sharing of explicit photos is becoming a more common practice in teen culture. Digital technology and mobile apps like Snapchat make it fast and easy to instantly send and receive naked pics. Both boys and girls are actively participating, much to their parents’ chagrin. But why? It turns out that boys and girls may have different reasons for sexting. Certainly some girls voluntarily participate or even initiate...

When our kids start dating, it opens up a whole new world of challenges for parents. It always has. But today teen romance comes with a unique set of digital challenges and information-age risks. Whether it’s your son or daughter, you want them to have a positive experience. To be supportive parents, we need to understand how our kids communicate, meet potential romantic interests, flirt, date, and even break up...

Social media and engaging online are part of being a kid today, but just one post, tweet or text can get a student suspended or expelled, ruin friendships, impact future job opportunities, or influence college admissions. Right or wrong, a single, split-second digital decision can damage a teen’s reputation and permanently impact a child’s digital footprint. This is a lot of pressure for an adolescent, who is just trying to navigate the high school years and all that goes with it...

As parents, we want to give our kids the freedom to explore, grow, make mistakes, and develop resilience. But we also want to keep our kids safe. Today’s children are digital natives and the Internet is their second home, teeing up new concerns and new ways to track or monitor their behavior. From parental controls to routine spot checks of devices and accounts, mom and dad can read texts, posts, Snaps, email, and more...

Digital play makes our kids’ childhood drastically different than our own. Many parents are concerned about the potential impact of today’s high-tech electronic gaming and graphic digital content on their kids. Are the fears justified? Many experts say yes. Others disagree, pointing out that video games give our kids’ brains a workout as players solve problems, concentrate and communicate. Either way, kids love gaming and digital play is here to stay...

Teen sexting is happening, whether we like it or not. In some circumstances, this may be innocent behavior between two teens, adolescents just being adolescents. But in other cases, there can be serious consequences. As uncomfortable as it may be, parents need to be prepared to navigate the myriad issues that may surface when our kids send, trade and collect sexually-explicit selfies...

When it comes to sexting, most parents think, "Not my kid." But multiple studies and anecdotal evidence indicate that's not the case. Handing an Internet-connected camera (a smartphone) to an adolescent — who is wired to ignore consequences, obsess over popularity, and explore sexuality — means you should assume he or she will be exposed to sexting almost immediately (if not actively participate)...

How do our own digital habits affect our kids' relationship with tech? Checking notifications at dinner and going to sleep with your phone may be setting norms you're not even aware of. Marc and David chat with Stephen Balkam, founder and CEO of the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI.org) about how modeling good digital behavior is equally important as the conversations we have with our kids about tech. Balkam shares his list of bad tech habits all parents should break in 2019.

Privacy law in the U.S. has one clear line: Treat everyone 12 and under as kids, and everyone 13 and older as adults -- at least when it comes to the online world. The core privacy law around kids using digital services was written in 1998 when the Internet was very different. It's been updated once, but the protections for kids are still limited and the rules are confusing...