Texting While Driving

What is it when tweens get into a car they immediately start texting? Sometimes I notice they are texting one another, meaning the person sitting right next to them. Are they trying to show each other how fast they can text or are they trying to isolate the other kids in the car. I think it is rude and disrespectful to one another. I compare texting in a car to whispering to another friend but only ruder. 

Parents need to teach their children to think about their actions and how their actions could make another person feel. Here are a couple of questions tweens need to ask themselves when they start texting in a car filled with other peers. How does the tween who is not being texted in the car feel? Would I like to be the tween who is not getting the texts? In our digital age, it is becoming more evident that all children need to be reminded and taught to have basic common courtesy to one another.

Hijacking Leads to Cyber Bullying

Has your child been a victim of hijacking? Hijacking in the technology world is when a “so called” friend uses your child’s login and password information to access their account. When their account is accessed by their "friend," the friend can start off by making changes to the games’ characters such as an outfit or name.

Login and password information can easily be viewed when your child visits another friend’s house and is on the computer and goes onto a gaming site. The child may not even realize they left their login and password information on the computer for their friend to access their account. What happens as innocence fun for one child can lead to upsetting the other child. 

If parents are not aware of this type of behavior from children they are contributing to cyber bullying. Children need to be taught to respect others’ personal information even if it is on your family’s computer. When this lesson is not taught, then it lends to the possibility of these children as teens to continue accessing their “friends” accounts and posting embarrassing or untruthful information. In the end, it is cyber bullying.

Educate and Engage with Your Children for a Safer Online Experience

Fred  Lane, author of Cybertraps for the Young,  reports the average American child now owns a cell phone by the age of 10 and 80 percent of those 10 year olds own at least one gaming console that can be used to access the web. Astonishingly, nearly one in four kids under the age of 5 now uses the Internet regularly

What these statistics tell us... it is never too early to talk to your children about Internet safety. Children are being exposed earlier and earlier to computers, cell phones, iPads, iPods and online gaming, just to name a few.  Parents today do not have a choice but to educate and engage with their children about the Internet and staying safe when online.  Parents would not let their children talk to strangers in real life, so why would it be okay to become “friends” with strangers online.

Here are three key facts to educate your children about and post next to the family computer:

1. Nothing on the Internet is private
2. People online are not always who they say they are
3. People are not always truthful online

If children can engage in these three facts, it is a good start for a safer online experience in the ever advancing digital age.