Your Child Living In A Digital World
This past Monday night, December 4, parents of grades 3- 8 joined together for a workshop "Your Child Living In A Digital World." Dr. Eli Shapiro, of the Digital Citizenship Project, presented to the parents and facilitated a discussion regarding our fears as parents and some steps we, the Yavneh community, can take. Dr. Shapiro presented the behavioral, social, psychological and day-to-day impact that technology use has on our children. The dependence, distractibility, impulsivity, disinhibition, anxiety, depression, lowered cognitive ability and lack of sleep have all been substantiated by the research. Dr. Shapiro also presented the results of the survey that went out to the Yavneh parent body on our children's technology use. Only 39% of parents said they were confident in managing their child's technology use. He shared a tentative contract one can make with one's child before handing him/her a device.
Dr. Shapiro also discussed the power the parent has to influence the norm of what is acceptable technology use in our community. This led us to come to the conclusion that we would like to form parent committees for each grade which can discuss and agree upon some norms for that age group, (i.e. time that technology shuts down, what apps are appropriate).
We left the evening energized to do more to support each other as parents in keeping our children safe from some of the negative effects of device use. Any parents interested in joining a committee for their child's grade, please contact Dr. Aliza Frohlich at [email protected].
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