When I was about eight, a friend and I would play spies on our council estate.

We'd use the poorly designed walkways as our lookout posts, and the labyrinth of corridors were the motorways for our high-speed chases.

The fun we were having was obviously lost on the angry older lady who lived on the corridor we raced down.

She opened her door and shouted at us to stop running and making so much noise.

My friend shouted back colourfully, suggesting she go back into her flat and leave us alone.

We ran off laughing and I felt like a gangster.

I got home to find my mum waiting and angry. She knew what I'd done, who I'd been with and what had been said.

At the time I had no idea how she had become so well informed so quickly, but in later years she explained that she'd been informed by the estate's internal communications system - her network of other mothers and friends who picked up the phone and let her know what I was up to.

Now, almost 40 years later, a lot has changed. For many children their playground is digital.

Alice Phillips, president of the Girls' Schools Association, warned at a conference recently that some parents had grown afraid of chastising their children in case the little cherubs embarrassed them on social media.

She went on to claim that parents were becoming less bold and intuitive and instead were constantly second-guessing themselves.

"I find myself increasingly wanting to reach out to them as I believe that parenting has never been as difficult as it is today," Phillips said.

"Why? Because one's instincts are constantly challenged and spontaneous confidence dissolves. Today, social media means they are conscious that their every action is the subject of global scrutiny."

I'm not sure what sort of people send their children to St Catherine's school in Surrey, where Phillips is head, but parents need to be immune to embarrassment.

The job of a parent is to bring up a well-adjusted, balanced young member of society, not to be "down with the kids".

• Maurice Mcleod in The Guardian

Maurice Mcleod is a London-based journalist.

Born into the digital age and exposed to technology and the internet very early, this generation of kids are effectively guinea pigs in the lab of life.

How - and when - will we know how much is too much for developing minds?

"The proliferation of cell phones, social media and apps among kids has changed the way they interact each other and content online," says ThirdParent co-founder Rob Zidar.

Thirdparent specializes in internet safety for kids, and Zidar adamantly believes early over exposure can be detrimental.

"Kids are exposed to content created by or intended for older audiences," Zidar continues.

"Kids are also interacting with social media at an earlier age. Tweens are being introduced to sites like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat and can feel pressure to become active on those sites.

They witness things like cyberbullying or posting inappropriate selfies at an earlier age than parents might think, and in some cases they feel a pressure to ‘fit in' and emulate those actions."

"Irregular immaturity"

What this is creating is ‘irregular maturity' in children.

With the availability of pretty much everything at the light touch of a finger on a portable device, parents are missing opportunities to help their children understand the world they are accessing.

There tends to be a technology disconnect.

Parents, who didn't grow up with the tech they are using and handing to their children, trust their kids with technology that has a very thin line.

When that line is crossed, it can create patterns of obsessive behavior that can lure even the most well-educated child into a harmful relationship. Continue reading

Source

• Curtis Silver, The Next Web

According to Geekdad, Curtis Silver writes all over the internet.

Australians have smartphones and tablet computers gripped in their sweaty embrace, adopting the new internet-enabled technology as the standard operating platform for their lives, at work, home and play.

But it is not only adults who are on the iWay to permanent connection. As parents readily testify, many children don't just use the devices, they are consumed by them.

"These devices have an almost obsessive pull towards them," says Larry Rosen, professor of psychology at California State University and author of iDisorder: Understanding Our Obsession with Technology and Overcoming its Hold on Us.

"How can you expect the world to compete with something like an iPad3 with a high-definition screen, clear video and lots of interactivity? How can anything compete with that? There's certainly no toy that can.

"Even old people like me can't stop themselves from tapping their pocket to make sure their iPhone is there. Imagine a teenager, even a pre-teen, who's grown up with these devices attached at the hip 24/7 and you end up with what I think is a problem."

The technology has been absorbed so comprehensively that the jury on the potential impact on young people is not just out, it's yet to be empanelled.

"The million-dollar question is whether there are risks in the transfer of real time to online time and the answer is that we just don't know," says Andrew Campbell, a child and adolescent psychologist.

Media convergence means that everything from War and Peace, television, movies, video, computer games and the internet - all with potentially different effects on a child's brain - are available on the same device.

Parents used to worry only about TV use. Now school students' screen use may begin at home with TV in the morning, continue with interactive whiteboards, laptops and computers in class, smartphones at lunch and on the bus, and continue at home with TV, computer, phone and tablet. Wayne Warburton, a psychologist at Macquarie University, says US studies show that beyond the school gates, teenagers are using screens or listening to music for more than 7½ hours a day. In Australia it is more than five hours and rising. Continue reading

Sources

• The Sydney Morning Herald
• Image: dynmk