Giving a child a smartphone without guidance is like giving them the keys to a 4×4 without teaching them how to drive – it can lead to terrible accidents and enormous dangers on their digital journey‼️ 97% of 12 year olds now have access to a smartphone and 45% are online ”almost constantly” So the […]
After more than a decade of stability or improvement, the mental health of adolescents plunged in the early 2010s. Rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide rose sharply, more than doubling on many measures. Why? In The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt lays out the facts about the epidemic of teen mental illness […]
Play with me, not with your smartphone. Children went out in the street of Hamburg a couple of years ago. They were protesting against their parents’ excessive use of smartphones. Smartphone ‘technoference’ is creating distance & a wall between parents and their children & has become a real problem. ‘Technoference’ is defined as parents’ use […]
‘The New Digital Divide’ is digital wellness — which means responsible and healthy relationships with technology — all part of overall children & student wellbeing which is an essential 21st-century skill. It is not uncommon that children spend 6 to 8 hours on digital screens every day. Some children are taught knowledge and skills necessary […]
Children today are growing up with computers, Gameboys, Play Stations, X-boxes and Wii’s. They are the generation of screenagers. But what does this mean to your child’s development? Well, it means that your child will: be strongly visual and think in pictures be literal as opposed to abstract in their thinking have a shorter […]
Is ‘Technoference’ affecting your parenting? Are you always checking your phone? Do you find it hard to turn it off? Do you check your phone at the dinner table or in restaurants? Are you on your phone at the school gates, trains, coffee shops ? So, the BIG QUESTION IS…. Is your child’s sulking, whining, […]
“When Jessica’s mum, Sandy, tries to take away the iPad, there’s a tantrum that threatens to go nuclear: wobbly lip, tears, hands balled into fists and a high-pitched wail. “She does this a lot,” says Sandy. “She seems to prefer the iPad to everything else. Sometimes it’s the only thing that will keep her quiet,” […]
What do you make of this? Let your kids spend more time online to ‘save the country’, says ex-GCHQ chief Britain lacks cyber skills and is “desperately” short of computer scientists and engineers, warns a former cyberespionage chief. Mr Hannigan, who stood down as the director of Britain’s electronic surveillance agency in January, was responding […]
I call them ‘Screenagers’ and I had to have words with my own 22 year old daughter as she was stirring the onion gravy during our Christmas lunch replying to something on her MOBILE PHONE ! Despite the casual joke about ‘I hope it doesn’t fall in the gravy’ I was angry, distressed, disappointed and […]
Here’s an interesting article in the Bangalore Mirror about screens, mental health and your child’s wellbeing. Unplug your kids from being a screen addict before it affects their mental health. Everyone seems happy. The digital intervention seems to be an easy distraction for the kids and a relief for the parents. But one needs […]
I found this really interesting infograph on my Scoop feed today that I thought you’d find interesting today too.
I’ve just discovered Eric Pickersgill take a look at his extraordinarily powerful message – simply shown through his black and white photos of the impact of smartphones on our relationships, experiences and missed moments of being present #PauseToPonder http://www.ericpickersgill.com What can you do just for today to be fully present in the moment ? What […]
I was fascinated to read that when Steve Jobs was running Apple, he was known to call journalists to either pat them on the back for a recent article or, more often than not, explain how they got it wrong. Nick Bilton was on the receiving end of a few of those calls. Here’ s […]
I have recently been creating a One Page Profile with a lovely 10 year old who is nagging and nagging and nagging her parents for a mobile phone ! I don’t know what you think but I was recently on Sky News discussing 5 year olds who have their own mobile phones ! Now I love […]
I have to say I’m glad to see that the makers of “free” web and app-based games have been warned by the Office of Fair Trading of “potentially unfair and aggressive commercial practices” that could target “susceptible” children to pay to continue playing. It follows cases where children have run up bills of thousands of pounds without […]
