Screenagers Blog

I just got back from a 3-week vacation with Meleah, my 13-year-old. She is a social teen who likes to “talk” to her friends via Snapchat, Facetime, and Instagram frequently. A week before we left she said: “Mom, I think I’m going to leave my iPhone at home.” I played it cool and just asked why. She said she needed a break. So, we went old school and turned it back to 2004.

School may be out, but summer reading is just heating up. I often get asked by kids in Screenagers’ audiences whether reading on an e-reader counts as screen time. While a screen is a screen, I highly encourage kids to read, whether it’s paper or electronic.

We've all lost track of time when using our phones. So many parents, myself included, want to make sure the screen time limits we've set are being followed by ourselves and our children. Luckily for us, there are several apps out there designed to manage screen time limits so we don't always have to.

I received a few emails this week about the appropriate age to buy a young person a smartphone. Data shows that younger and younger kids are getting smartphones —what is too young?

If your child’s life has included a Minecraft phase, you know what I’m talking about. There’s the beginner level of the game that you play, walking from place to place collecting resources for survival, and there are the deeper levels, that can include creating entire neighborhoods to programming your own action sequences and building tools that you make available to other players.

I am upset. Yesterday my teenage son Chase showed me the Discover feature on Snapchat. The Discover feature grabs content from a variety of sources — Cosmopolitan, Buzzfeed, CNN among many others and makes it accessible to anyone, including our kids. But what makes me so mad is that there is no way to remove or block the Discover Story feature on the app. So what do we do?

Last week, Harvard rescinded the acceptances of 10 incoming freshmen for posting racist, sexually offensive material on Facebook. As intense as the consequence may seem, this is an important reminder that nothing on the web is private, even private chat groups.

In the past couple of months, I visited schools where the teachers talked to me about concerns over kids and cell phones during field trips.

When I visit schools across the country, I am consistently surprised that students, parents and even teachers are frequently unsure of the cell phone policies at their school. Wouldn't it be great if we had data on how often middle schools allow students to have cell phones with them all day? And wouldn’t it be great if we knew what policies parents want?

One of the most interesting screenings of Screenagers was at a conference for addiction professionals. Did you know that about 1% of the U.S. population has a gambling disorder? It is almost double that in Hong Kong.

I strongly believe that one of the most powerful aspects of Tech Talk Tuesday is starting the discussion with something positive about the tech in our lives. If we really want to have effective dialogue that creates a lasting tech balance with our kids, we need to talk about the positives too. Believe me, your kids will want to hear this week’s TTT.

As Mother’s Day approaches I have been thinking about my mom and her support over the years, and I am also thinking of non-family important women who have also helped me when I was growing up. I call these women Mentor Moms.