Administrative aids of computer processing speed every 18 months, known as Moore’s Law, is making devices smaller and more powerful. With new platforms popping up every day, the entire process can become overwhelming and that leaves many parents feeling hopeless in their effort to learn, adapt and succeed with new social media platforms, let alone their smart devices. ‘Nostalgia gets in the way of understanding the relation between teens and technology. Adults may idealise their childhoods and forget the trials and tribulations they faced. Most adults assume that their own childhoods were better and richer, simpler and safer, than the digitally mediated ones contemporary youth experience. They associate the rise of digital technology with decline – social, intellectual, and moral.’ (Danah Boyd op.cit.)
If your child is under the age of 12, they have never known a world without Facebook. Do you bury your head, or overcome the challenges and find time to understand them?
Parents are not interested And then sometimes, parents just truly don’t care. For whatever reason, the idea of social media doesn’t seem appealing. But many parents watch YouTube, and have Facebook accounts. Ask your children about Snapchat, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, Periscope and Vine. Don’t project your own lack of interest in emerging technology onto your children, or the gulf will only widen as they grow up. Let’s face it, they will be the ones running our world. Don’t let them develop bad habits, or fall victim to privacy issues. Their digital legacy means much more to them and you. Be interested! ‘Teens are struggling to make sense of who they are and how they fit into society in an environment in which contexts are networked and collapsed, audiences are invisible, and anything they say or do can easily be taken out of context. They are grappling with battles that adults face, but they are doing so while under constant surveillance and without a firm grasp of who they are. In short, they’re navigating one heck of a cultural labyrinth.’ (Danah Boyd op.cit.) The world has changed. The way we communicate, share, learn, collaborate, consume, has all changed. Make your school a place where parents as well as children are prepared for the future. Simon Noakes is CEO and founder of Interactive Schools. Danah Boyd It’s complicated; The Social Lives of Networked Teens. Yale University Press 2014 ISBN 978-0300166316
The virtual school gate Judith Keeling explains how parents keep in touch When my teenage son moved up to his senior school at the age of 13, we suddenly found ourselves in a whole new world. The new school was only a mile from his old prep school, but we were now in the land of a semi-independent boy who travelled by himself to school on the local bus instead of riding in the back of Mum’s Taxi. Now, on the rare occasions I pick him up from school, I have little idea who anyone is, teachers and parents alike. Chatting at the school gate and swapping information with other parents has clearly become a thing of the past. The sensation of being shut out of your child’s school world is something most parents of teenagers experience – but there are practical issues we all need to solve, too. How do you know that the party he’s just told you about is really happening on Saturday night? Who are the parents hosting the event – and are they really happy for him to sleep over afterwards? And, of course, will there be alcohol?
Finding answers to questions like these can be tricky – often your child doesn’t have the phone number of the other family (and is too embarrassed to ask for it). And schools themselves usually do not provide a list of contact details for parents to share because the current data protection laws make it too complicated to compile one. But we parents want to keep in touch with each other, if only to coordinate lifts to matches or to track down lost blazers. Who knows, we might even like to socialise with each other, too (parents are allowed to have fun sometimes, you know). In some schools, class reps still plough on with compiling endless spreadsheets, but these can quickly become out of date or inaccurate – it’s easy to misread a hastily-scrawled email address on the back of a piece of paper. But now a new ground-breaking free service has hit on a pioneering solution to the problem of parent communications. Classlist is a secure parent-to-parent communication platform
Autumn 2016
09:55
*CCR Vol53 no3 Autumn 2016.indd 39
39
19/08/2016 12:30
