Teen Texting While Driving

January 31, 2011 1 Comment

Around 50% of teens admit to texting while driving, and that’s a really scary thought for parents who have a new driver in the house.

Teens are already the riskiest class of drivers. They are inexperienced, exhibit slower reaction times, and often aren’t paying attention to much other than the car in front of them. Teens also think they are invincible, not imagining that unsafe behavior can hurt them or someone else.

Add texting into the mix, and it’s a deadly combination. Texting while driving is even more dangerous than drinking while driving – yet many teens who would never drive drunk are occasionally or regularly texting behind the wheel.

It’s vital that your teen understands the true risks of texting while driving when the big 1-6 arrives. Consider drawing up a contract where your teen pledges not to use their cell phone while driving, under penalty of getting their driving privileges revoked by you.

Also important: be a good role model. Adults regularly text and drive, too. Don’t be one of them. Teach kids – both by word and by example – to put their phone in an inaccessible place while driving and to practice saying “Can you get that?” to a passenger in the car when they receive a text they’re just dying to read.

When your teen is distracted by reading or sending a text, he or she is much more likely to make a deadly mistake like running a red light or drifting over the center line. Any text your teen could possibly read or type is not worth putting their own life (and the lives of everyone else on the road) on the line.

Consider watching this video from AT&T with your kids to start the conversation about texting while driving:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DebhWD6ljZs

This post was contributed by Jenny Evans and originally appeared on www.kidsafe.me.

Filed under Teens, Text Messaging Tagged with ,

Internet Addiction May Put Teens at Risk for Depression

August 7, 2010 Leave a Comment

Would your teen start to get the shakes after 15 minutes if you took away the computer and all their Bluetooth-enabled devices? If so, it may be time to worry about their online usage’s impact on their mental health. 

A study published on Monday by the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine suggests that teenagers who are pathologic Internet users are twice as likely to develop clinical depression.

The study involved self-reporting from 1,100 high schoolers in China on their Internet usage and prevalence of depression symptoms. Emotionally healthy teens were more likely to report symptoms of depression 9 months later if they were also addicted to the Internet.

To compound the problem, the university researchers behind the study reported that Internet addiction also leads to increased aggressive behavior, relationship problems, and even physical health problems.

The findings of the study remained constant among kids with differenteconomic statuses, ages, and genders – although teen boys were more likely than girls to report use in the first place.

Remember that this study only proves that Internet addiction and depression are likely to occur together, not which one caused the other.Maybe Internet addiction causes depression, or perhaps teens developingdepression are more likely to turn to the Internet in an effort to self-medicate.

Either way, it’s time to talk if your teen exhibits signs of Internet addiction like:

  • Isolating self from real-life family and friends
  • Withdrawing from offline interests
  • Hiding or lying about Internet use
  • Online time interferes with homework or sleep
  • Eating meals or doing other activities in front of the computer
  • Developing carpal tunnel syndrome
  • Gaining or losing weight
  • Complaining of frequent backaches or headaches
  • Having trouble focusing on offline tasks
  • Appearing anxious, moody, or restless, especially when offline

When Internet use turns into addiction, it interferes with your child’s life and therefore becomes a problem. It may also mean that there is something more going on than meets the eye. Addictive online behavior is your cue as a parent to talk to your teen.

Filed under General, Teens Tagged with , ,

Kids, Texting and Text Lingo

June 15, 2010 3 Comments

Are you concerned that your child’s thumbs might fall off as a result of sending too many text messages?  Well join the club. If your home is anything like mine than you’re seeing the number of text messages being sent and received by your child head steadily upwards.  The average American teen now sends or receives one text message every nine minutes!

Text messaging is no longer just another way to connect with one another; it has become a cultural phenomenon.  Parodies on television of teens and tweens texting to one another while in the same room are funny because we can all imagine our own children doing the same thing. We’re asked to text in our vote to American Idol.  Barak Obama won the White House, in part, because of his team’s ability to engage young voters via text messaging.  The Pew Internet & American Life Project recently confirmed what every parent with a teenager already knows – texting has become the preferred channel of basic communication between teens and tweens and their friends.

Text messaging, officially called Short Message Service (SMS), has grown in popularity with teens for three primary reasons:

  1. Texting is a more efficient and a faster way to communicate than a voice phone call,
  2. The cost of messaging plans has steadily declined,
  3. Sending a text message is similar to passing a note in class – it is a discreet method of communicating with friends.

For parents and educators, it is this last statement that represents a challenge.  Let’s start with the obvious.  Why did we pass notes in class when we were kids?  If we’re being honest with ourselves than we can acknowledge that we were communicating something that we either didn’t want others to hear or we shouldn’t have been communicating at that particular moment at all.  Passing notes in class was our attempt at convert communications.

Text messaging has many benefits, it is here to stay and most text messages our children send or receive represent perfecting acceptable content.  I have nothing against text messaging.  That said, this chart illustrates, a staggering percentage of our children admit to using text messaging inappropriately.

Perhaps even more alarming is what Local, State and Federal law enforcement is seeing as a skyrocketing trend.  Child predators are now increasingly using text messaging to communicate directly with our children often right under our noses. Predators are always going to go where the children are and the preferred method of communication by kids is text messaging.

Risks and threats to our kids’ well-being have been a part of life since the beginning of time.  But it is important for us to accept a very simple truth – texting messaging and kids can be a risky combination without active parental involvement.

Introduction to Text Lingo

While the smart phones are capable of sending long text messages, less advanced mobile phones can only accommodate messages of 160 characters. This limitation naturally led users to try to use the fewest number of characters possible to convey a comprehensible message.

To cut the character count of a text message, users often use abbreviations and ignore punctuation and traditional grammar. For words which have no common abbreviation, users commonly remove the vowels from a word, or use pictures or a single letter or number to represent whole words.  Eventually entire phrases were reduced to acronyms.  Today, text lingo (also known as SMS language, Textese, chatspeak, chat lingo or net lingo) is a commonly used and well understood language by most teens and, to a lesser degree, technology-savvy adults.

Most of us are familiar with the regular, more harmless codes like LOL (laughing out loud) and ttyl (talk to you later) and a few others here and there. But as I said, text lingo is an entire language and most parents don’t speak text lingo fluently.  This opens the door to much risk but understanding the risk is the first step in managing it.  Allow me to share a sample conversion with you:

Sample Text Lingo Conversation

Surprised?  Stunned?  As this conversation illustrates, text lingo is not only more efficient than writing out entire messages, it also makes it possible for some pretty troublesome conversations to take place right under our nose.  Kids and child predators alike are able to engage in conversations that few parents would be able to understand.  Text lingo has become so mainstream with kids that it is now used in email, on social networking websites and when chatting with instant messaging services like AIM® and Yahoo Messanger®.

Talking to Kids in a Language We All Understand

Whether we’re talking about text lingo, the traditional written word or picture our kids put online, the best tool at your disposal to decrease risky behavior is your active involvement.  The earlier we start talking to our children about the decisions they make online and with their mobile phone the better.  Our children need to understand what our expectations are and what we consider “out of bounds”.  Most children, teens included, say that their parents are the strongest influencers over the decisions they make.  Just because we don’t speak in text lingo doesn’t mean that we cannot talk to our child about using the language appropriately.

Text messaging and text lingo are going to be a part of our kids’ life long into the future just like social networking, having a bank account, using a credit card, driving a car, etc. With consistent guidance on text messaging and text lingo from mom and dad, you have every reason to expect that mistakes will be less frequent and less severe. ______________________________________________________________

Tim Woda is a passionate advocate for protecting children from today’s scariest digital dangers – cyberbullying, sexting and predators. He co-founded KidSafe, is the author of Keeping Kids Safe: A Guide for Parents of Social and Mobile Children and is a frequent public speaker on topics related to technology and child safety.

Copyright © 2009-2010 Tim Woda

Filed under General, Mobile, Pre-teens, Sexting, Teens, Text Messaging Tagged with , , , , , ,

Kevin Jennings: The Right Person for “Safe School” Czar?

September 24, 2009 Leave a Comment

Sexual Relationship Between a Student and an Adult Male Met in a Bus Station Not Reported by “Safe School” Czar

Kevin Jennings: Obama's 'Safe School' Czar

Kevin Jennings: Obama's 'Safe School' Czar

Kevin Jennings, now the “safe schools” appointee in Barack Obama’s US Department of Education, is a prominent activist.  As the Executive Director of the Gay, Lesbian, & Straight Educators Network (GLSEN), he has done much to make schools safer for students who identify as gay.  But that alone doesn’t qualify him to be the “safe school” czar.  Rather, I believe it is the position he takes regarding the following account that casts doubt about his qualifications for such an important role.

Since Mr. Jennings began his career as a teacher it shouldn’t surprise anyone that he often uses former students to make various points when he is speaking to groups or in his books. One such student he referred to as “Brewster”.  In at least one talk to a GLSEN rally in Iowa in 2000, we get a clear picture into Mr. Jennings’ qualifications for protecting children and promoting appropriate school-parent communication.  Below is a transcript of the section of Jennings’ speech that speaks to “Brewster” and an audio of the speech can be heard here.

And it took me back to 12 years ago at Concord Academy in Concord, Massachusetts where I taught, where I was a very scared young gay teacher. I had been fired from my first job for being gay.

And in my second job I wasn’t sure how I wanted to deal with that. And I was in my first month on the job and I had an advisee named Brewster. Brewster was missing a lot of classes; he was in the boarding school so I said to his teacher, his first period teacher, I said, ‘next time Brewster misses a class I want you to tell me that he’s missed that class and, uh, I will go find him.’ So I went and found Brewster one morning when she had called and he was asleep in his dorm room.

And I said, “Brewster, what are you doing in there asleep?” And he said, “Well, I’m tired.” And I said, “Well we all are tired and we all got to school today.” And he said, “Well I was out late last night.” And I said, “What were you doing out late on a school night.” And he said, “Well, I was in Boston…” Boston was about 45 minutes from Concord.  So I said, “What were you doing in Boston on a school night Brewster?” He got very quiet, and he finally looked at me and said, “Well I met someone in the bus station bathroom and I went home with him.” High school sophomore, 15 years old. That was the only way he knew how to meet gay people. I was a closeted gay teacher, 24 years old, didn’t know what to say. I knew I should say something quickly so I finally said, My best friend had just died of AIDS the week before. I looked at Brewster and said, “You know, I hope you knew to use a condom.” He said to me something I will never forget, He said “Why should I, my life isn’t worth saving anyway.”

Mr. Jennings did not notify authorities that a 15 year old boy left the boarding school at night to travel 45 minutes away to a bus station and then went to an adult stranger’s home and likely had sex with him.  He didn’t notify anyone that the boy expressed that his life wasn’t worth living.

Today Jennings claims he had no reason to believe that the child was engaging in sex with a strange man he met in a bus station.  What do you think?  Why did he ask the boy if he used a condom if he didn’t think the teen was engaging in sex with strangers from bus stops?  Did he know the boy left school grounds or go to the home of a stranger?  Did he know the boy was severely depressed?  Of course he did – it is Mr. Jennings’ own accounting of the Brewster incident.  What was Mr. Jennings’ response to the National Education Association (NEA) for bringing this issue to light?  Jennings hired a law firm, Nixon Peabody LLP, and threatened to sue  the NEA for libel, saying there was no evidence that he knew the student in question was sexually active, or that he failed to report the situation. In fact, The Washington Times reported in 2004 that “state authorities said Mr. Jennings filed no report” with the Massachusetts Department for Children and Families, the department to which Jennings — as a Massachusetts teacher — would have been legally obliged to report the situation.

It is totally reasonable for parents to expect that the “safe school” czar is someone with an unambiguous record on appropriate school-parent communication.  Instead of threatening law suits, Mr. Jennings could have taken a different position.  Had Jennings said something like – “I was a new teacher, in over my head with that situation.  I should have alerted someone about a troubled 15 year old boy being 45 minutes away from his boarding school without permission and potentially having sex with an adult he met in a bus station,” then maybe he would deserve a pass – assuming the rest of his record stands up to scrutiny.

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______________________________________________________________

Inspired by his own child’s encounter with an online predator, Tim Woda is a passionate advocate for protecting children from today’s scariest digital dangers – predators, sexting and cyberbullying. Tim raises awareness of these issues and shares his experience with parents through Internet & Mobile Safety Workshops hosted by schools, churches and other organizations. He is also a co-founder of KidSafe, developer of the world’s only Parental Intelligence System which helps parents keep their social and mobile kids safe while teaching healthy online habits.

Copyright © 2009 Tim Woda

Filed under Politics, Teens

Facebook reaches 65 million mobile users

September 17, 2009 Leave a Comment

Facebook milestone - 65 million mobile users

Facebook milestone - 65 million mobile users

Assuming you haven’t been living on a deserted island, you already know that Facebook is the most popular social networking website on the planet.  In fact, it gets more popular every day.  But the way you use Facebook is not the way your teen uses Facebook.   For this generation, Facebook has replaced face to face communication, talking on the telephone and even e-mail.

According to a June 2009 Neilsen report, “How Teens Use Media”, almost 50% of teens have a Facebook account and by comparison to adults, they are described as “prolific” users.  But alas, technology moves as quickly as our children.

Facebook has announced that they’ve hit a new milestone – 65 million people now access Facebook via their mobile phone.  Just eight months ago that number stood at “only” 20 million people.  Facebook’s web site m.facebook.com works on any mobile browser and x.facebook.com is designed specifically for touch screen phones.  Since 37% of teens have access to the web via their mobile phone, your “prolific” user may actually be using Facebook more than you think.

Social Networking Safety Tips for Mobile Kids:

  1. Talk to your teen about how they use social networking sites. Having an open dialogue creates a more comfortable environment to talk about this part of your child’s life.  If you’re not comfortable, your child won’t be comfortable talking to you about this aspect of their life.
  2. Place limits on when and where your child can use their mobile phone. When we were children, we all used the telephone wired to the wall in the kitchen… and we survived.  In fact, this probably kept a few of us from getting ourselves into an awful lot of trouble when we were younger.  Kids should be expected to use their mobile phone in public areas of the house – just like their Internet connected computers .
  3. Clearly communicate your expectations.
  • Create an appropriate username
  • Set the privacy settings for the account so that only approved “Friends” can access their profile
  • Do not accept “Friend” requests from strangers
  • Do not post personal info online such as their real name, their age, address, school name or phone number
  • Do not post, send or forward explicit pictures of themselves or others
  • Do not talk about drugs, sex or other inappropriate topics for children (yes, teens are still children)
  • Treat others online the way they would like to be treated offline – the Golden Rule
  • Tell a parent if something happens that makes them uncomfortable

    • Following these common sense tips will help teach your child that using social networking sites like Facebook comes with some responsibilities.  Francis Duncan recently post “Social Networking Survey Results” on Safety Clicks.  Francis shares some staggering information about what teens say they’re doing on social networking sites like Facebook.  I strongly recommend that you check it out.  You won’t believe some of the things kids are doing on these sites.

    For more information on protecting your child online and on their mobile phone and to learn about exciting new parenting tools to be released in the coming months, visit www.kidsafe.me – smart tools to keep our kids safe.
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    ______________________________________________________________

    Inspired by his own child’s encounter with an online predator, Tim Woda is a passionate advocate for protecting children from today’s scariest digital dangers – predators, sexting and cyberbullying.  Co-founder of KidSafe.me, developer of the world’s only Parental Intelligence System which helps parents keep their social and mobile kids safe, he raises awareness of these issues and shares his experience with parents through Internet & Mobile Safety Workshops hosted by schools, churches and other organizations.

    Filed under Facebook, Mobile, Pre-teens, Social Networking, Teens Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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