My friend Jason suggested I check out this Yahoo! blog article about parenting and social media/web stuff and was right about it being awesome. Here’s a clip:

Institute family meals with tech breaks. Current psychological literature recommends that families sit down and share at least 3 or 4 meals together a week. Keep them short–under 45 minutes–and tech free for the most part. Give everyone a two-minute warning to check whatever device beforehand. After 15 minutes, allow a one minute message or text check. Aim to expand the tech free time as your kids become more focused.

Don’t use your ignorance about technology as an excuse. It’s true that kids know more about technology than parents but this is a poor reason for adults to act clueless about what teens or tweens might be doing online. Equally counterproductive is letting a kid spend hours on end alone in their room on the computer so you “can get work done.”

Don’t rely on secretly monitoring online activities. Not only is it an invasion of privacy, most kids can work around parents’ surveillance in a matter of minutes.

Look for warning signs. If your child is regularly staying home “sick” from school and spending the entire day on the computer, if they choose to be online more often than out with friends, or if their grades are suffering because they are distracted by technology, you need to step in and help them create boundaries. With their input, draft a written contract with clear rules and consequences. Often, parents make initial penalties too big such as grounding their kid for a month if they catch them online in the middle of the night. Better to start small such as losing their phone for an hour and escalate as necessary.

JG