Odd Girl Out (46 page)

There are additional benefits to having the computer in a public part of your home: you get to see your kids. "When we start putting computers and TVs in their rooms," says Lori Getz, the Internet safety expert, "that's where they go and we lose them."

Create a cell phone parking area.
Establish a place in your home where all cell phones are parked and charged (and, if possible, silenced) during preset times. It might be for a prescribed homework period, during dinner, or both. Although this practice can feel difficult at first, most people find it a relief to let go of their phones for certain periods. With fewer external stimuli, family members are free to focus on each other and on important tasks.

Prohibit sleeping with phones.
There is no good reason why a girl should be sleeping with her phone. Girls rest their phones under the pillows or on their chests so they can wake up if someone texts. If drama is afoot, late-night texts quickly become irrational and explosive. Plus, girls lose valuable hours of sleep. Let your daughter know her phone gets parked before she goes to bed (if she can't bear the idea of her phone sleeping alone downstairs, you may need to snuggle with it under your pillow, as some parents have done). If you are not sure what your daughter does with her phone at night, the answer is only as far away as your latest phone bill. A record of each number she texts and the time it was sent is easily accessible. There is one exception to this: New applications exist that allow users to text without owning a phone. There is no record of these texts. If your daughter has a device that can download "apps," you will need to check if she owns one with this new texting capability.

Limit gadgets at meals.
It is a common sight at restaurants: adults talking while two children sit lost in their gadgets. Waiting for your meal can be boring, but it can also be a time for families to catch up and connect. The ability to "turn off" reality and seek refuge in a device prohibits kids from developing the ability to manage impatience, discomfort, or other difficult emotions. Being able to make small talk is also a vital skill that is stunted in children who are not expected to do it. If families give kids permission to log out of conversations, it becomes part of a child's repertoire of manners and etiquette in the world.

Make family meals, at home or out, a sacred time uninterrupted by technology.
Do not respond to phones or computers. As an alternative to using gadgets at the table, try going around the table and asking each family member to name their highs and lows for the day. That is, each person should briefly describe the best and worst part of his or her day. You can do it as a nightly ritual.

Limit social media during homework.
In 2010 a Kaiser Family Foundation study found that half of students ages eight to eighteen use the Internet, watch TV, or use some other form of media either most or some of the time while they do homework.
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With the constant disruption of a vibrating phone or blinking chat window, kids do not develop habits to help them sustain longer periods of work, focus, and thought. Scientists call this study time "rich learning," the kind of knowledge required for higher-order thinking tasks like math or reading. With social media at play during homework, kids end up multitasking, or switching rapidly between different tasks.

The problem is that multitasking does not allow for rich learning, and it also results in epic amounts of distraction. Allison Miller, a high-school freshman who sends and receives twenty-seven thousand texts every month, told the
New York Times
about her struggle to balance her social and academic lives. "I'll be reading a book for homework and I'll get a text message and pause my reading and put down the book, pick up the phone to reply to the text message, and then twenty minutes later realize, 'Oh, I forgot to do my homework.'"

Researchers at Duke found that when adults do not supervise computer use, children choose playing over homework. In 2010 only three out of ten young people had rules limiting technology use. They used media about three hours less than peers with no rules.
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Kids need parents to set these limits. Although teens may rely more on the Internet to do some homework, there are no assignments, as far as I know, that require a text message. During homework hours, have your kids park the phone with prescribed times for use (a fifteen-minute texting break every forty-five minutes, for example). This practice will allow your child to work with much less distraction.

Lori Getz suggests asking kids to try homework one night while using social media, then the next night without it. After the two nights, talk with your daughter about the difference in learning, efficiency, and effectiveness she experienced. As you consider implementing these changes in your home, keep in mind that habits take time to change. There will almost always be resistance ("I won't know what's going on," "I can concentrate better if I can text"). After the initial storm of indignation, many girls actually find the permission to unplug a relief. Alternatively, the solitude and quiet of homework time may be one of those things they thank you for when they are adults.

 

keeping her safe online: what to do

Just as your child needs to know how to be safe when she goes somewhere without your supervision, she needs guidance to protect herself in the digital world. There are two kinds of situations to prepare her for: cyberbullying, or sustained harassment by a peer, and cyberdrama, the day-to-day dust-ups that can occur between friends.

In this section, I will list safety precautions you can take, as well as strategies to talk about with your daughter so she stays safe online.
girl

Know the passwords.
At the moment you give your daughter access to new technology, whether it is a device, software, or Web page, know her passwords. Be there when she sets them. Establish, from the beginning, that you will play a supervisory role in her digital life. Let her know you will do random checks, in her presence, on her phone, social networking page, or computer. Do not abuse your monitoring privileges, or your daughter may seek other avenues for privacy that you never discover.

If you allow your daughter to be on Facebook, insist that you are her "friend." Alternatively, ask another adult trusted by your family to friend her.

Read the phone bill.
It bears repeating: know who she's texting, how many she's sending, and what time the texts go out. Wireless phone companies have safety controls for kids' phones; call, find out what they are, and talk with your daughter if you're considering using them.

Check in and ask questions.
Lori Getz advises parents to inquire about kids' virtual lives in the same way they would about their physical world. "You always want to know who they're with, where they're going, how long have they been there and what are they doing," she says. To do this in the virtual world, ask your daughter about the applications on her phone: which ones does she use the most? Have her show you the photos she has posted or that others have posted of her. Ask to see her friend list and who she has been texting with lately. Are they people she knows personally? You may not get the answer to every question, but you are owed a reply. If you get the silent treatment, it may be time to monitor her remotely.

If you spy, do it openly.
A cottage industry of spyware has sprung up to help parents remotely monitor everything from texts and websites to keystrokes. It is understandably tempting to know what she's typing and where she's going. How closely you monitor your child's life online should not diverge dramatically from your real-world parenting style. "If you are the type of parent that would ask a whole bunch of questions but not necessarily pick up the phone and listen to a child's conversation, then you should be the kind of parent who asks a lot of questions but doesn't pick up the phone and read text messages," Getz says.

If you spy without telling your daughter and end up letting her know later, she will feel betrayed—and rightly so. No matter your intent, spying sends the message that, on some level, you do not trust her. The lines from earlier in the chapter—"It's not that I don't trust you. I just don't trust other people"—don't hold up here. Consider that there are other steps you can take before going to this extreme.

In other words, don't make spyware your first intervention as a parent. Give your daughter a chance to make you proud and prove to you that she can use social media responsibly. You can let her know that is exactly what you are doing by
not
using spyware! Instead, as a first step, try random checks of your daughter's phone, social networking page, and computer (while she is on it). If you still feel nervous or unsure, that's when you take the next step. Remember, while you are entitled to monitor, she is also entitled to know she is being watched.

High school does not mean total privacy.
No matter how hard she tries to convince you otherwise, your daughter's increasing independence does not entitle her to freedom from parental oversight on-line. In the "real world," more freedom is cause for more questions: as she begins to drive on her own or with others, you ask where she is going and who she is with. You expect she will encounter challenges to her values, so you talk about the issues and let her know she can call you, no matter what. The same is true online. No matter what she tells you—and teens are especially gifted at pressuring parents to give up or give in on the subject of online supervision—you do not "graduate" from parenting in the digital realm.

Keep her off websites with anonymous commenters.
Prohibit your daughter from visiting websites where people can post anonymously. As I show in chapter four, destructive websites like Formspring.me are heavily trafficked by middle and high-school girls. Formspring allows girls to open an account and receive a personal page on the site. Anonymous or known commenters can then ask the girls random questions on their pages, and girls usually answer.

Formspring pages have become free-for-alls of cruelty, fueled by the anonymity the site affords. They are online venues where girls sign up and are demeaned and harassed by people they know but can never identify. Here is what I tell girls about using these sites:

• When people post anonymously, there are no consequences or costs to what they do. People write things they would never say. They also lie, just because they can. They say things to get a rise out of other people visiting your page. You can't trust anonymous posters because you don't know their motive, or even who they are. Anonymity doesn't give people courage to say what they really think; it lets people say anything, true or false, which is why you can't trust it.
  
• By inviting people to say harmful things to you, and then reading and responding, you give them credit. No matter how clever a comeback you come up with, you make it seem like their words are worth responding to when you reply.
  
• You will never be someone who is 100 percent liked by everyone, so stop thinking you're going to be. This is why so many girls sign up for sites where people can comment on them; they believe they might be that person who everyone loves. This is a useless waste of time. Focus on the relationships that bring you happiness and security, not people who tear you down. If you are worried about what other people think of you, ask the people you trust and who know you, not cowards who hide behind a cloak of anonymity to hurt you.
  

 

keeping her safe online: what to say

Here are the most important things to tell your daughter about on-line safety and digital citizenship.

There is no such thing as privacy online.
It doesn't matter if you only wrote it in an e-mail, or the person promised not to share it. Once something is electronic, it can be forwarded and shared endlessly. Imagine you are holding a pillowcase filled with feathers at the top of the Empire State Building. If you cut open the pillow, empty the feathers out, take the elevator down, and run along the street, you could collect some of the feathers, but never all. Carried along by the wind, cars, and shuffling feet, they will disappear to places unknown. The same is true when your words or image are put online. Once something begins to get forwarded, it becomes like those feathers. It's gone.

Ask your daughter what the difference is between making a funny face at you and taking a photo of her face and sending it to a friend. One of these images is in her control, and one isn't. The face she made at you can be re-created by only her; what she sent, if a friend forwarded it, could be re-created over and over again, as new people encounter it in their phones and in boxes. It could be digitally altered and re-sent as an entirely new image. The same is true of her e-mails, chats, and texts.

A good rule of thumb is for her to ask herself a question before posting or sending: If this showed up on the front page of our local newspaper, would I be okay with that? If the answer is no, she is taking a risk by putting the content out there. Remember, too, that when online content lives forever, it can besmirch a girl's reputation among college admissions officers or employers.

Stop, Block, and Report?
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Internet safety experts recommend three steps for responding to a cyberbully. First, stop. Do not engage with the cyberbully by retaliating or, in the event of an anonymous attack, attempt to track the bully down. This is not a battle a child can ever "win," and responding usually only provokes the cyberbully. Second, block the cyberbully. This can be done for texting, e-mail, and chat (if you don't know how, Google "how to block a user on [type in the website name, phone, or software]." If necessary, delete old accounts and create new ones for your child. Third, report the cyberbully. Encourage your child to save or print the offending material, and then discuss it with you. No matter how upset you are, encouraging your child to retaliate teaches your child that aggression is appropriate self-defense and exposes her to more danger.