Digital Citizenship: Parents

From cyberbullying and photo sharing to digital footprints and online safety, the Connecting Families program helps parents and kids address important topics and have meaningful conversations about making great choices in their digital lives.

Messages about body image impact both girls and boys. Whether in magazines or on the Internet, boys hear the message that in order to be more masculine they need to get a chiseled physique. Get tips on how to help your son develop a healthy body image.

For young girls, body image concerns can be overwhelming. Whether through magazines or on the Internet, the message they are getting is that they would be happier if they lost weight. Find out how to help your daughter develop a healthy body image.

Dr. Kimberly Young is a licensed psychologist and has been an internationally known expert on Internet addiction over the past 20 years. She started studying Internet addiction in 1995 and founded the Center for Internet Addiction. She is a professor at St. Bonaventure University and has published numerous articles and books including as Caught in the Net, the first to identify Internet addiction available in nine languages, Tangled in the Web, Breaking Free of the Web, and Internet addiction: A Handbook and Guide for Evaluation and Treatment available in five languages.

In Taiwan, pediatricians and psychiatrists have categorized Internet and electronic device addiction as an “emerging pediatric disease,” citing a four-year-old boy who is a heavy user of tablets and experiences withdrawal symptoms when not able to use the devices.

What can parents do? Children need different rules at different ages of development. Here are some 3-6-9-12 Rules for the home which par- ents may want to use to determine how much technology their child is exposed to.