We’ve heard of digital parenting many times, but what is it really?
In Digital Parenting: The Challenges for Families in the Digital Age, a publication of the Nordic Council of Ministers, its authors Giovanna Mascheroni, Cristina Ponte, and Ana Jorge gave this definition:
“Digital parenting is a popular yet polysemic concept that refers both to how parents are increasingly engaged in regulating their children’s relationships with digital media (parental mediation), and how parents themselves incorporate digital media in their daily activities and parenting practices, and, in so doing, develop emergent forms of parenting.”
Having been immersed in this work for the past decade, and noting how children interact with technology and behave online, I can only stress one important thing: parents need to be digitally updated. Parents cannot not know. Parents cannot make excuses about not understanding the digital sphere.
Having been part of the team of experts which put together the Digital Citizenship Framework (UNESCO, 2017), as the basis of the Digital Kids Asia Pacific’s Digital Citizenship (UNESCO, 2019), it made me realize how encompassing Digital Citizenship is for the young, and parents have a big role to play.
UNESCO’s DKAP Digital Citizenship Report recommended that parents “embrace positive sides of screen time, but with caution!”
It’s a simple but strong message. Parents as asked to balance the digital opportunities their children to exposed to and maximized. At the same time, they have to be adept in managing the digital risks that their children and their families may encounter.
Parents need to consider the points UNESCO recommended:
It is not just about the length of screen time use.
Parents need to go beyond the length or quantity of use. It is more important to understand how children use digital media as well as the quality of content they consume. One child may go online for two hours after school to play Mobile Legend, and another may go to YouTube for robotic videos for his class.
Parents need to guide children to use digital devices in ways that support digital citizenship.
Online learning supports digital citizenship. Children are already digital literates, but they can become digital innovators and creators. It’s also best if they can learn how to be emotionally mature and digitally resilient in traversing the complexity of the online world.
Children should be encouraged to spend their time in a balanced manner that includes healthy physical and social activities.
I’ve been involved in parenting education for almost a decade now, and this has always been my primary message: children must have right balance between their online and real lives. Parents cannot discount the fact that there are developmentally sound activities and matters that we need to consider for the children. Parents need to keep balancing, checking, mentoring, mediating, re-aligning, and connecting with their children.
The truth is, parents cannot wait for government to lay down the rules, for governing bodies to flag down online predators, and for software developers to develop only good content.
Parents cannot let their children alone with technology.
We are the parents, and we need to raise children who thrive and succeed in the digital age.