Parenting Tech-Savvy Kids

This article was written for Scarsdale10583 by Barbara Kapetanakes, PsyD.
I heard through the grapevine recently that one of our local school districts had to deal with the malicious use of new technology. Just a day after one of my adolescent patients told me about YikYak, a new anonymous social media app, someone used it to make a threatening comment and the school was put on alert. While many of these anonymous social media outlets monitor their sites for threatening or inappropriate content and remove it, they obviously cannot do this immediately, and with social media being what it is, information flies through cyberspace in seconds, making the process of removing content too little, too late. Even if it's a prank, which it usually is, there is wasted time, manpower, and angst spent trying to find the source and ascertain safety.

There are other anonymous apps as well such as Whisper and Secret, as well as an app that allows people to share pictures or comments for only a few seconds before they disappear, called Snapchat, which many teens use for sexting and sharing risqué pictures. Even with programs such as Facebook, a person can make up a fake persona to hide behind. Because of my profession I use Facebook with a fake name and keep my privacy settings how I want them, but I could easily have a half dozen accounts with different email addresses and use whatever pictures I want to create a persona. In fact, it is so easy to steal photos and other material off the Internet that not too long ago a teenager was arrested for taking pictures from a photographer's professional site and using them on her own blog where she lied to get sympathy. The photos were of the photographer's young son, but the teen used them claiming to be a woman in her 30s who had lost a child to cancer. She set up an entire site dedicated to this supposed dead child and blogged about her loss. The site caught the attention of other grieving parents as well as sympathetic souls wanting to provide support. Only by dumb luck did she get caught when a friend of the photographer was doing a web search for something and saw pictures of a familiar little boy.

Considering the amount of fraud that can go on online, as well as anonymous cyber-bullying, parents are often confused as to how to protect their children. For one thing, the kids seem to keep up with technology much more quickly than their parents, and by the time a parent learns about an app that may be of concern, the child is on to the next one. In addition, as kids get older they want and need more freedom so that they start to make their own decisions, engage in unsupervised activities, and otherwise get ready for the outside world. It's a very difficult line that parents have to walk—letting their kids grow up while trying to keep an eye on what's going on.

While technology is a far cry from what it was when most of today's parents were coming of age, the way that you would protect your child's safety and health is still very much the same. Though most kids use only their cell phones today rather than home phones, you can still keep track of who they are communicating with and what is happening in their lives. For one thing, you can take your child's gadgets away after a certain hour. Yes, some kids use their phones for an alarm clock, but there's a solution for that. It's called an alarm clock. While I may have tried to sneak in some late phone calls as a teenager, if I talked too loud I'd get caught. Today, kids can (and do!) text well past midnight, some texting virtually all night with friends, and their parents are none the wiser. Taking the phone at bedtime, unplugging the computer, and otherwise removing distractions makes it less likely that your child will be up during the night chatting online or sexting on Snapchat.

Presumably if your child has a phone and computer, you are paying for this. From time to time check the call and text logs by going into your account through the carrier's website to assess the amount and patterns of usage. Typically my mother answered the phone and took a message if I was not home, so she had some sense of who was calling, but today's parent can check the phone logs and see what numbers come up a lot, or at odd times. When did we become a society who has no idea who our kids are talking to because we all have our own personal phones and never use anyone else's? Which brings me to...

....pick up your child's phone if it rings. Isn't it strange that we live in a world where most of us would not pick up our spouse's, child's parent's, or sibling's telephone? What could be so personal? Barely a decade ago we shared phones with the rest of our families. If a call came in it could have been for anyone in the household, so anyone answered it. In fact, kids were often the first to go running for the phone hoping it was for them. Not too long ago a teen lamented to me that she had her phone taken away as punishment for something or other, so she was unable to call any friends because she only had their numbers in her phone. She needed to speak to a friend about a legitimate school concern and could not. I suggested that she find out the house number and call the friend there from her own home phone. She told me that this behavior was "sketchy," because no kids called to or from landlines anymore. Bizarre. Calling a phone where a parent might answer and your supposedly innocent call would be public knowledge is more "sketchy" than calling cell to cell where the call can be "Kept on the DL" as they say.

You can check the history on your computers and put parental controls in place so your child can't go to sites that would be inappropriate. Many families have computers in high-traffic areas of the house so that parents can casually glance at the screens while their children are using them. Also, with a parent close by, kids are less likely to hop onto a site or app and start sending inappropriate messages or get involved in bullying.

If you find out your child has gotten in over his head—whether by misusing social media or as the victim of cyber-bullying, treat it as you would the same situation without technology. What would you do if you found out your child was being bullied on the playground? What would you do if you found out that your child took a nude Polaroid and gave it to her boyfriend? Technology does complicate things, since the Polaroid may have been shared with a couple of kids in a locker room in the past, but the jpeg can now be sent to the entire school with the touch of a button. And while a bully on the playground is a known entity, a bully online could be anonymous or using another child's name. Don't be afraid to get the school involved, as they may have a handle on how best to do damage control—this is not likely to be the administration's first rodeo.

It's also very important to educate kids in the first place. I take many opportunities to pursue this topic when it comes up with kids I see in therapy. Most are not looking for trouble, they truly have no idea how much information they make available on the Internet. Think about prom and graduation season—how many beautiful photos do parents and kids take by the limo, in the cap and gown, in the beautiful dress and then post online? Has it ever crossed your mind that in those photos could be your home address, your license plate, the sign on the corner of your street? When you and your children post those pictures on social media, what privacy settings are used? Who can comment on them? Once, in doing a presentation for young children on Internet safety I showed them how easy it was to take something off the Internet and make trouble for someone by right-clicking and saving a photo off my cousin's Facebook. I then used an editing program to write insults on the photo. Then I went to strangers' pages and again "stole" their profile or other pictures, and downloaded them onto my computer. Once something is on the Internet it can be downloaded, and if your child has 1500 "friends" or "followers" all those people have access to that information. Educate your children about being careful and smart. Before posting a picture make sure there's no information you wouldn't want out there. You would freak out if your child gave out your home address, but what about those lovely brass numbers in the background behind the beaming graduate, or the street sign off to the side?

Parents often say "we live in a different world today" to justify helicoptering over their kids. Yes and no. We do live in a different world, a world where you can go online and find out if convicted sex offenders live in your town—that, to me, sounds like a safer world in some respects. Technology does make this world different, and it changes the way humans interact, including children and teens who are still working out social interactions and the nuances of relationships. Parenting has to keep up with new technology, but the bottom line is not that much different. When my parents put a separate phone number in my bedroom, that was the latest technology, and they continued to parent me as they had when we shared the one phone on the desk. Today's kids use newer and newer technology, but you should still be aware of the technology and supervise them as appropriate for their ages. Kids will always get things past their parents—that's reality—but don't underestimate parental intuition, benign snooping, or direct questioning. The same way my mother warned me not to keep my keys in my purse while riding the subway or walking around, since my purse contained ID and a mugger could run off with my address and keys, today's parent has to advise his children about how to remain safe in different, more modern circumstances. I STILL keep my keys separate from my wallet, and hopefully we will teach the next generation how to remain safe in the swirling eddy of the information superhighway. It's here to stay, so we may as well learn to coexist.

Dr. Kapetanakes is a psychologist practicing in Sleepy Hollow. She specializes in working with teens and young adults, school issues, divorce issues and divorce mediation, and neuropsychological evaluations.

Disclaimer: Although Dr. Kapetanakes is a board member and past president of the Westchester County Psychological Association (WCPA), the views in this article are hers and not the views of WCPA. WCPA is a professional organization of local psychologists that furthers the study and practice of psychology through workshops, meetings, community outreach, and involvement on state and national levels.