Parenting Your Net Generation Child or Adolescent

Navigating the online social networking world is a daunting task for most parents. Thankfully, recent research has shown that parents can greatly influence their child's experience online. Dr. Larry Rosen, Professor of Psychology at California State University, Dominguez Hills and author of Me, MySpace, and I: Parenting the Net Generation, has found that certain parenting styles can be very effective in parent-child negotiations surrounding MySpace and other social networking sites. Read on for tips and tricks to help make the battle over the online social networking world more productive and less stressful.

First, and foremost, parents should learn and adopt an “Authoritative” parenting style. 

This means that you, as a parent, set rules and limits on your child’s behavior, but you do so while consulting with your child and listening carefully and attentively to his/her thoughts and ideas. My recommendation is to have regular short family discussions dealing with technology use in the house and elsewhere, keeping an open dialogue on a continuing basis.

Technology changes so rapidly that you need to keep abreast of what is new and hot and might be appealing to your kids. For example, did you hear about MySpace 5 years ago? Now it has 110 million regular monthly visitors. How about YouTube or Second Life or whatever comes next? Your kids will know all about the current hot websites well before you do so it is important to talk often and find out what technology is beckoning them to climb aboard.

Second, Authoritative parenting should be done using a model I call, TALK for Trust, Assess, Learn, and “K”communicate. 

Third, understand that there are two types of parenting – Proactive and Reactive. Both are important in raising children. Proactive Parenting involves all parts of the TALK model. It means that you do your best to anticipate potential problems and discuss them with your children BEFORE they happen. For example, if you read an article about teenagers making friends online and then meeting them offline, this would be a good issue to discuss in advance with your children during one of your family discussions or dinners. Start the discussion stating your concerns and then listen to what they have to say. My research shows that the panic caused by the media about sexual predators, cyberbullying, abduction, etc. is blown way out of proportion. Further, even when something bad happens online, nearly all teens know how to handle the problem in an appropriate way. Have them tell you how they would handle it and then compliment them on their safe practices.

Even the best parents cannot anticipate every potential problem that their children might encounter in today’s electronic worlds. This is where Reactive Parenting comes into play. When your child does something that you think is harmful or dangerous, it is common to overreact and immediately apply a major punishment. Telling your teenager that the Internet is off limits for an indefinite time and he/she is “grounded for life” will only make matters worse. This is a good chance to practice Authoritative Parenting. Remember that an Authoritative Parent sets limits after discussing them with their children. Hear them out and ask them what they feel the consequences should be for their actions. Kids often recommend more strict punishment than parents so this is a great opportunity to take what they say and lessen it so everyone wins.  Punishment is tricky. For it to work best it needs to be done immediately, contingent on the behavior, and applied consistently. This simply means that you need to punish only for the behavior that was done, as soon as possible after it was done, and be consistent in punishing the same behavior the same way without losing your temper or escalating the punishment.