 Hi, welcome just really quickly just so we can kind of cover our baselines again. So we are parenting in the digital age we're going to be doing this conversation and an overview about some of the techniques that you can use to address some of the issues that are happening with your kids and opportunities that you have to connect with them when they are online. One of the first things I'm going to recommend that you consider reflecting on is thinking about your own habits. What are the ways in which you are building and you're modeling the habits for your child and what is it that you do every day that can potentially help to support your child in building some of those habits. I'm going to give you two very quick examples and we can kind of move from this. So I'm a parent of a seven-year-old and one of the things that my child often sees is how often I'm in front of my phone to answer really basic things like text messages. Most recently she says do you always have to be in front of your phone? There's a very sort of clear kind of reflection for me because I wasn't processing kind of when I'm in front of her what I was doing so part of the build-up for our habits is then to be explicit about when her father's on the phone when I'm on the phone and what the reasons I'm doing besides that. And it's also a really great time for me to say if I don't actually have to be in front of the device in front of my child what else can I actually be doing in that place. So these are kind of just subtle things that your child or you might be inadvertently like showcasing maybe checking your phone during dinner time. These are all subtle things that you can shift to model something entirely different based on what your kids need. Let's kind of give some background into like what's actually happening here and in common sense we do quite a number of we come up with research and we have a research department that really helps us to understand what exactly is taking place and I'm going to give you a quick snippet we came up this a census report we do this every year and we are going to give you kind of a snapshot on what our kids are on and what they're doing when they're online. So we know that since the pandemic our kids are using quite a bit of screens and that their time has actually gone up and for most of our kids and again this is primarily for tweens or teens upward in their age group we've noticed that there's an upward a continuous upwards of kids being online but you'll notice here that on average tweens and teens are averaging about eight hours and 39 minutes a day on entertainment on their devices. So that went up obviously we know that since the pandemic but you'll also know that it's gone way up since 2015 when we started this process and I just want to let you know what that that looks like right that regardless that our kids are spending a lot of time online and the next part of our research is we asked our kids and again this is a 13 to 18 year old kids we asked them what are some of the platforms that they couldn't live without and what we're noticing and what I want to kind of highlight is two things for you one is that YouTube as a form of passive entertainment and connection continues to be the primary platform that kids want at this particular age group want to connect with right so we know that that's that's a medium of passive consumption meaning our kids are just often just viewing clicking viewing clicking viewing you'll also notice that at 13% tick-tock another platform we talked about yesterday is another platform where kids are actually then engaging so with it which is like then creating videos or manipulating videos or viewing videos so being a part of that platform and one thing I want to point your attention to in both of these sort of research these highlights that I kind of shared for these findings is to the extent to which kids are passively viewing content how much time that they're viewing and what they're maybe doing to recreate or repurpose on these spaces and that can give you a snapshot of like how to then start having conversations early on about with your kids about what they should and shouldn't maybe be doing online it's a really really great way for us to connect again I'm gonna give you a personal example we have a dear friend that noticed that her child was using quite a bit of you are wanting to be on ticked or wanting to be on YouTube early age again this is a third-grade child and mom at the time decided that one of the best ways and what she wanted to engage her child is by asking her child to draw something that she looked at when she was viewing a particular YouTube cartoon and so they would pause her video maybe at some point in the viewing to draw out or sketch what she actually was seeing what she interpreted that message is being and this is a really great way to start to diversify the content to start to look at media much more broadly than how much time is being spent in what they're actually doing with that time right enough of that lecturing let's kind of get into specifics let's get into like why these things can be problematic and I think what what's really important to kind of note as you think about your parenting skills is what are the pain points for your child at this point and there's three that we've kind of outlined common sense that you should be familiar with early on when the child first is introduced to a device and the elementary level you know until they get to about fifth grade there's quite a bit of conversations between parents and child about media consumption being very unbalanced and what that means is parents often have conversations with their child about how much time that they're spending online as opposed to what whether or not that that time online is actually quality base so what I would encourage you to do as a second kind of step this afternoon is to ask yourself are you the parent that constantly is talking about getting off their device without actually having much more critical thinking I mean much more intentional conversations about what that child is actually doing what your child is doing in front of that device secondly is are you building in time where that child is balancing their time online with other things you know maybe there are they going to the park before or after are they reading books from the sub-francisco public library what exactly is that and how are they diversifying those times in order to create a much more balanced human being if you find that you're also using it as a temporary babysitter that sometimes I do acknowledge when those times are and be more explicit about what you want your child to be doing when they're viewing some stuff instead of just giving them the device the second thing that you'll notice and things that we are hearing is that as kids get a little older right around middle school there's quite a bit of what they refer to as the grind meaning that they're the production of and the curating of their content becomes very real to them so as a child sort of engages in social media and engages in socialization at this point meaning being friends with others online they really are spending a lot of time using filters curating what they want to share in on these platforms so what's really important to note is that if you have a child that's in middle school one of the things that you want to be aware of is how much time your child is actually spending on any given device to do a specific thing so if Kate and I if Kate's my child and Kate is spending a lot of time like redoing her hair creating a particular filter to be connected with the friends in a particular way we want to kind of interrupt those or the that process by asking Kate Kate what's what else is going on what else can we potentially do we want to make sure that we interrupt the curation and the fatigue associated with the child being on any given device for long periods of time I'm gonna make sure that you kind of take take a step back and kind of know what you want to get out of sort of the pain point now so what I would love for you to do is really reflect on you know how you parent as a your child when it comes to some of these pain points before we get into the final one is it a constant harassment is it as an actual intimate conversation you're having about the content that they're viewing are you sharing your own viewing and your own sort of ways in which you're engaging with media these questions are really key into reflect on because the third thing I think is probably key in all of this we noticed that as our kids develop kind of a social identity and these digital spaces there's a lot of room for misinterpretation miscommunication when families often share with me kind of their biggest concerns is they often share that they don't want their child to be bullied online or they don't want to participate how their child participated in any type of digital drama and what I would often say to them is I asked them how often do you practice resolving dilemmas online for your child so here's sort of the big takeaway in all this we see an upward trend of kids miscommunicating online and taking miscommunication to a heighten level may give you a really quick example I might say to Sabrina or Kelly or Jose if you're on the line something I was sharing a particular image and I made fun of a particular part of that image now Jose Kelly Sabrina might actually interpret that message wrong and respond to that Instagram message or that message very differently which then causes a very a big tension right that rather than actually ask for clarification a skill that my child may or may not develop they react to something as we often do and so one of the things that we want to consider in this pain point for you all is we address this pain point is to ask yourself how often am I communicating with my child about how to resolve something online these are kind of really create key and critical kind of pieces is let me just quickly summarize this number one is thinking beyond like how much time your child is spending and asking to think about the quality of the content that they are engaged with to is interrupting when your child is producing videos or engaging in content more explicitly interrupting that process and asking them to think critically about what it is that they post and how often they feel connected to what it is that they're sharing and finally to actively practice communication skills in online spaces so when they are confronted with dilemmas online they can really use some of your support in that process all right so let's kind of go back to the beginning here right the first thing I'm gonna ask you to do is think about a habit you want to create for your child this week maybe it's putting your phone away maybe it's showing ways in which they can navigate conflict maybe it's about communicating over an email depends on where you're at but start with one habit that you want to try to build in your family and model for your child communicate that and my own household it's about putting devices away so what I'm doing this week is teaching my child what it is to actually put a device away and what I'm doing to close up for the next day so I've sort of showed her like how I journal or how I take care of my to-do list and what that looks like online and we sort of have this process of doing that online so really subtle habit but this is something that I use in online spaces to model for her what I expect from her when she moves from one space to another think about yours all right let me give you some tips now so you understand kind of the where you can kind of turn to for them all right so we have if you are interested in your like Jamie I have no idea what these tools even mean what do I do with all this information like where do I start I don't know what this thing called the TikTok is whatever this thing is I'm going to provide you with a one really great resource here now a common sense offers free resources for you so as a parent you can turn to our ultimate guides and it gives you a broad overview a broad stroke of what each of these platforms do again I gave a session yesterday on some social media basics I'm going to provide you with a way in which you can kind of look at a platform and learn a little bit more about make sure this quick video so you all can kind of see what this is may not know about the popular social image sharing platform Instagram number one according to the terms of service kids should be 13 years old before signing up unfortunately Instagram has no age verification process so lots of kids younger than that are using it number two some users have multiple accounts that are completely separate from each other fake Instagram accounts are public-facing and highly curated and project an ideal online persona that's hard to achieve in reality number three depending on whom you follow or what you search for you can find lots of mature content on Instagram whether it's cyberbullying or oversharing comments on posts can be downright vicious especially if an account is public number four Instagram accounts are public by default so the first setting to change is the privacy setting with a private account only people you approve can see what you post number five using Instagram might affect a teen's body image and sense of self the pressure to look perfect or to get the most likes and followers means some teens will be comparing themselves to others and number six Instagram is also a place kids can be creative posting art poetry and videos that showcase their talents so when used purposefully and in balance with other activities the app can leave kids feeling connected and positive for more tips visit us at commonsense.org so you can see right away we'll we can provide you with some basic tips again if your child is on roadblocks or they're on Minecraft we have an ultimate guide that includes videos very basic videos that you can then turn to some really interesting resources for you so all right let me kind of close with this just so you all we can take some questions and kind of think about you know like what are things happening in your own life if I'm in your position today one of the ways in which we can just start is by the conversations that you actually have with your child about their own digital presence and I'm going to give you three conversation starters that can actually help you to develop a much more engaging kind of way to talk to your child about tech use and if you if use appropriately if use to connect with your child if used to affirm your child's well-being which I think most of you do it could really help you to develop a really strong relationship with your child about what it is that they're doing online so the first thing that you may want to kind of ask yourself is I'm asking your child a suspending your judgments about something your child might be doing online and instead asking them what they did online that made them feel a certain way that triggered something for them this could look something like this right Jose I noticed that you're eating some peanuts right now they'd look really good or you're noticing a snack what did you do online today that actually made you hungry for peanuts today is there anything that you saw online that made you feel a particular way so what I'm doing in this first conversation is I'm actually being inquisitive and I'm being extremely thoughtful about what I how I want to connect my child's overall well-being to an experience that they actually had online see if you can put those two together in the conversations that you have sort of try to move remove yourself from how much time that they're spending and instead sort of start to delve into what they viewed how often they viewed what what triggered something for them when they were doing a particular act online it's a really great way for your child to start to kind of open up to you when they feel pressures right this is a great kind of connection to them the second thing that that might be really helpful is oftentimes and more more likely than not as your kids get a little older they will be confronted they will see things that might be inappropriate might not be developmentally in alignment with where what you are as a parent or what your values are as a family but what we want to try to do is we want to try to ask our kids how are they actually solving some of those dilemmas those arguments those tensions that they might have so great question to start with is anytime your child has seen something or they share something to you instead of providing the answer to something or asking them logistical questions or detailed questions related to that you may want to ask them how they process that particular experience online so a prompt like how did you actually solve that dilemma with your friend I had a really great parent friend that's recently noticed that her kids are having a hard time talking about slime and they were using one of a platform called roadblocks in order to connect about an argument that had a school so the parent you know again the advice is about how they actually resolve some of these issues and the parent really wanted to know what was the pain point but more importantly how they were actually trying to resolve it and then it was only when the child said well actually we had an conversation when we were playing roadblocks mom where the parents said well maybe that's not the best way to resolve an issue when you're playing an independent game instead you may want to consider doing some other things right these are kind of the things that we want to help with our kids as they are confronted with these experience and then finally I cannot stress this enough build this in your day like get off the call right now think about what your child did really well today both online and in person and say that to them our kids with mental health being a huge kind of issue particular art with our middle and high school kids they need to know they need to be affirmed when they're doing something really well online it could be as simple as I really appreciated you got off without me asking you or I really admired the fact that you set a timer when you join that video game whatever the thing is pick one thing that you will say to your child today that you really appreciated about them and if you're like Jamie there's nothing my child is the worse when he when he or she turns into when they grab their device maybe you can just compliment the way they're holding the device right like really try to start somewhere and see if you can kind of build from that the point here is that we want to try to build in and reinforce those positive insights of those positive experiences that your child has because your child will be listening to that experience I'm good all right I'm gonna give you some last kind of resources for you and this is a really great resource if you're interested in your child's overall social and mental well-being online what we have a common sense and you'll notice in each of the slides is we've incorporated social and emotional skills to then build into daily conversations at home and what we've done is we've teamed up with an organization named Castle and what they've outlined is these five core skills that kids need to know about their presence and we essentially said if a child needs to be self-aware how can that child be self-aware when they're in online spaces so for you as a parent we've sort of done that really difficult work of providing you some very basic conversation starters that means like if you're at the dinner table if you're driving in a car instead of actually you know going into your particular spaces you might want to have these broader conversations about something I'm gonna give you one example just so you are aware in retrospect right or in connection to something so if I'm a parent of the middle school child I might have conversations with them about what makes really good digital habits and the conversations that I want to have is making sure that a child is aware of their own habits when they're in front of a device so I might say to Kate if she's my child like Kate what does it actually mean to you to actually have a regular sort of habit what do you do every day before or after you wake up what are you actually doing in that that space and and what Kate might respond are conversations that we can then help to kind of to curate or connect and to support during that during that time during those like initial conversations right again this is a basic conversation around self-management and how to manage their own time but if you don't build in these conversations as you know then the child might not actually be introduced to them in digital spaces you can't just simply say to each other do your bed I want to kind of get to that get them to kind of understand what what the process is to build these habits and also to have balance in their life so without being said these are kind of the what they what it looks like I encourage you to kind of click on them we again we outlined all five of these into basic conversation stars you can have as a family right enough of me talking let's practice Jamie what the heck can I do tomorrow to make sure that I'm parenting in a way that affirms some of the points that you've made just for the last 20 or so minutes here's what I would do if I were your position number one is take inventory review what it is that's happening in your family and reset the expectation if you if it if it doesn't agree to the values that you've set forth I see many parents to say you know might it's over with my kid they don't listen to anything I do and I can't control that well today I'm giving you the power to kind of make it happen and but set the expectation we want to make sure that that's really clear and review what it is that your child is actually doing online if they're playing roadblocks or too much if they are constantly asking for the device and they don't have any self-control we want to make sure that we were reset what it is that we're doing when we're in front of the device and be clear about the expectations moving forward practice with your kid the second thing is pick a an experience that they might have online something that's tricky maybe something that they view that it makes the whole family feel uncomfortable practice how to get through that and I like my seven-year-old I might say so you just saw an ad that said all children should die and now you're now repeating that let's practice again reviewing that ad one more time and tell me what we can do when you feel uncomfortable in that moment instead of singing that what else can we do and while it makes me feel really uncomfortable knowing that my child is now repeating an ad that that discusses that I'm but we're gonna get past that and then we can process of that as a family but we in that moment we have to figure out how to navigate those situations and practice enable have our child sort of practice what they're gonna do when they're in these particular spaces and then the final thing that I might have is if you have a network for your family and other parents that say you have really great friends or your child's friends or parents have a conversation with them the next time you're picking up your child you're connecting with them ask them what they are doing to address some of these norms and see if you can start actually having a collective about what you expect your child and your kids to be doing collectively online because you might not know that you know your child might be sort of developing long lasting relationships with with their peers and we want to kind of set the expectation maybe build sort of a little village that you can kind of help to support your child in that process and right I've talked to you here off thank you so much for the time thank you so much for being here Jamie I appreciate you thank you all so much for being here you all thanks Kate