The Obama administration has turned healthy eating into one of the hottest topics in the news today. The latest headline — a new symbol is about to be released – the Dinner Plate — to replace the familiar, but apparently confusing Food Pyramid. First Lady Michelle Obama has made it one of her priorities to combat childhood obesity and she has taken on some not so small battles such as the food marketers pushing their products to children, getting kids to exercise more and educating families on healthier eating.
It’s inspiring. But it drives home an important fact about the way we live today. We have lost our way. We don’t know how much is too much, what is healthy, what is not healthy . . . I remember one of the first headlines after Obama took office — it was about the Obama girls 8pm bedtime! Why? Because American families have neglected to enforce reasonable bed times for their children and as a result more kids have concentration and behavioral problems in school related to lack of sleep. So after educating us on the need for kids to have reasonable bed times, Michelle Obama is now helping us to understand portions — how much to eat of each type of food.
Could Internet use be next on her agenda? I hope so! With most parents not playing any role in setting rules about how much time children can be online and what they are permitted to do online, the Internet is having a profoundly negative effect on our children’s lives. Don’t misunderstand – - I am not suggesting that the Internet itself is bad or that children should be online. I am suggesting that similarly to how parents get lost amidst all of the advertising and SuperSizing going on with nutrition and diet, parents are lost in the confusion of technology, social networking, online homework, mobile gadgets, etc. it’s hard to know how much time a child should be allowed to be online, what to allow and what to block, what’s healthy, what’s dangerous. And once they have a Smartphone, how can you even have visibility into their time spent in Cyberspace?
On the Let’s Move Facebook page, Michelle Obama says: “I am determined to work with folks across this country to change the way a generation of kids thinks about food, nutrition and physical activity.” I want to suggest we start acting on the Internet front as well, before it is too late. The obesity epidemic should be a warning to how devastating it can be to allow a nation to develop unhealthy lifestyle habits.
From what I’ve seen among my friends, many people feel that the California bill to allow parents’ access to their kids Facebook accounts is outrageous. The bill also calls for Facebook’s default privacy settings to be on the maximum. Not sure if my friends find that to be a problem, but probably not.
Anyway, I’ve been giving this some thought. Normally, I’d be with the more liberal side on this one. My friends think it is an invasion of privacy and opens up all sorts of potential problems. Granted, the lawmakers, who tend not to be the most savvy when it comes to social networking platforms or Internet in general, may not be the most capable goup to properly legislate us to a safer Internet, but they are on to something here and I want to explain. Continue Reading
1. I am doing my homework and I just took a break to look at Facebook.
2. If I am not online, I can’t make plans with friends.
3. The assignment requires me to do the research online.
4. I am just downloading something.
5. I’m not really using the computer, I am just waiting for an email.
6. I’m the only kid in my class that has to get off the computer by 9pm.
7. If I do it online it will cost you less money.
8. None of my friends can get together so it’s the only thing I have to do.
9. Just a few more minutes (and then you fall asleep).
10. You are the only parents that limit time online.
More and more, human interactions are shifting from the real and personal world and over to the virtual world. It started with shopping and the invention of e-commerce. While once we had to walk into a store and interact with sales people and other customers and cashiers, today we can buy anything online – even groceries for tonight’s dinner. Continue Reading
If the average high school student spends 9 hours per week on Facebook and 1 hour per week studying, how about finding ways to integrate quality content and activities into social networking that young people can relate to and benefit from?
That’s today’s average – 9 hours of time spent connected to technology every day. Teens and older children are spending the same amount of time online as their parents spend at work . . . and sometimes much more. For a young brain that is not fully developed, this amount of activity will undoubtedly have an impact Continue Reading
It was not long ago that parents beamed with pride when their children showed enthusiasm and interest in using the computer. There was a sense that it meant that they were bright and advanced. Manufacturers even developed special keyboards for toddlers and infants. But all that has come full circle and parents are more and more frustrated and concerned about the increasing amount of time that their children are spending at the computer. Continue Reading
Despite all of the hype in the media about how our children are effected by the Internet, parents today are still not well aware of what they should be doing to keep their kids safe when they are online. Actually, parents are very confused about how to manage their children’s overall time on the computer and in most homes today, there are no time limits, no rules and certainly no web filter installed on the computers, laptops and Smartphones.
Adults are starting to catch up with their children in the technology sphere but I think they will always lag way behind. Kids are born into this stuff today. My son, who has a relatively healthy attitude about technology and integrates gadgets into his life in a very practical way, told me he can’t imagine life without his iPod Touch (unless it would be replaced with an iPhone). I feel fortunate that I don’t have that dependency to a gadget or to the Internet. But I realized that his perspective and his need for being online is much different than my need, despite the fact that my livelihood depends on the Internet. Continue Reading
Dr. Gabriel Newman is a Psychotherapist who says social networking sites can make it more difficult to interact with people socially.
Facebook addiction is not listed as such in a medical book, because science still needs to catch up with technology. But Dr. Newman says it may be diagnosable soon.
Teen star Aria Wallace is doing her part to help promote awareness of the growing problem of children and teens spending too much time on the Internet and too much time, in general, wired to all of their digital gadgets. This winter, she went “offline” for 40 days and kept a video blog to let her fans know how good it felt. Continue Reading
Two large studies last year — by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Pew Internet & American Life Project — document how much time kids spend online and plugged in to electronics.
More than 85 percent of 8- to 18-year-olds in the survey had computers at home, up from 73 percent in 1999. Two thirds had TVs in their rooms and about half had video game players there. Almost three quarters had Internet access at home. According to the Pew study, about half of teen Internet users went online daily, about the same percentage that said the Internet helped their social lives. Continue Reading
