I’m scared. In 1 year, I will have a teenager. In 4 years, I will have a teenage driver. And I have two more daughters after that. Just writing the past few sentences has given me a few more grey hairs. While automobile safety has improved dramatically over the past few years, so have distractions. It’s a leapfrog race to keep drivers safe as gadgets and other things around vie for attention.
How many cars have you seen with drivers chatting away on the phone, or worse yet, texting. Taking your eyes off of the road just to read a quick text for a few seconds when hurtling down a freeway means that you have travelled several hundred feet without looking at the road. A lot can happen during that timeframe. But there are lots of other distractions apart from texting and cell phones, think about teenagers chatting away in a car or loud music playing, that is enough of a distraction alone.
As adults, we have one thing on our side though that teenagers don’t have – driving experience. But if you ask me, I think a lot of adults use this as an excuse to drive even more distracted (drinking coffee, putting on makeup, talking on the phone, playing with the radio and driving a lot of loud children). It’s a miracle that there aren’t MORE accidents.
But Ford is working on a nationwide program aim to help reduce the number of drivers age 15-19 who die every year. The numbers are pretty scary actually. Some sobering statistics:
- 3000-5000 teens are killed on American roads every year, according to government reports
- Most crashes occur within the first hundred miles on the road
- There are 4 key areas that contribute to 60 percent of teen crashes: driver distraction, speed space management, vehicle handling and hazard recognition
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Facebook needs parental controls – although I will bet that if you ask kids between the ages of 13 and 16, they would say that it definitely does NOT need ANY type of parental control whatsoever. But, being a parent and a bit of a social media junkie, I know that something is definitely needed. Children are simply too young to understand the dangers of having a social presence. It is fun when things are going great, but as soon as social bullying rears its ugly head, it can be devastating to your kids. Not only that, but, like video games, cell phones, TV or technology in general, it can become incredibly addictive. I should know, I have a technology addiction (and a bit of Attention Deficit Disorder thrown in for good measure).
As adults we “supposedly” have the tools and intelligence to work with social media the “proper” way, although I would state that many people act like little, immature children when they are using it. But children often don’t have the experience or the “maturity” to cope with bullies, cliques, relational aggression or simply mean kids online. The number one thing that you, as parents, can do to navigate these tricky waters is to educate and talk to your children about both the advantages and disadvantages of being on Social Media. I am going to focus on Facebook specifically in this article mainly because it seems to be the most personal and has the most privacy controls, believe it or not, as compared to Google+ or Twitter. And most kids are on Facebook, even younger than the 13 years or older limit that is outlined within the Facebook Terms of Service and checked during the registration process.
It is really up to you to decide if you are going to abide by the age restriction. There may be reasons why you might want your 12 year old to be on Facebook. I’m not sure if I would let kids younger than that on there but I have heard of plenty who are. But you are the parent so that choice is yours. However, I do feel that there needs to be some tighter restrictions for those “legal” kids (13 and older) who are on Facebook.
Facebook needs to do something about this. They should have done this years ago in my opinion. Instead, they grew the complexity of the privacy settings to the point where you need a masters degree in Social Media to even come close to figuring it out. What Facebook HAS done recently related to kids is add the ability to include an unborn child in your profile. Uh really? Let’s get some innovation here and help those parents who are worried about their “born” kids on Facebook.
As a parent of a child who recently joined Facebook, I’m concerned. Currently without direct oversight, how can I ensure that she isn’t being tagged in inappropriate photos taking by her friends. How do I know if the people she is friending or who are friending her won’t hurt her in some way. Luckily, both my wife and I are pretty savvy on the workings of Facebook, or at least we think we are. We have heard stories of how parents friended their children so that they could keep their eyes on them, only to later learn that their kids tweaked their privacy setting to pretty much block their parents from seeing any of their activities, photos, videos, check-ins, etc. It’s pretty hard to avoid that. Kids are really smart when it comes to this.
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by Michael Sheehan on June 8, 2011
in application, Family, General, Opinion, parenting, Safety, Security, social networking, Software, video
Last week I spent some time speaking about Internet Security for your kids with Tony Ascombe, “Ambassador” of Free Products for AVG, an Internet Security firm specializing in keeping your business and home safe from
Internet threats. My feeling is that these types of discussions should take place regularly, and not just with security experts, but also in the home environment as well. Children are becoming exposed and involved with social networking at much earlier ages, even if parents don’t even realize this. Sites like Webkinz and Club Penguin introduce our children to social networking, and while potentially safe, these site are, in fact, planting the seed of online interaction at an early age. Parents really need to learn more about this and how they can protect their children. And you simply cannot throw technology at this issue and hope that it will “go away”; the other part involves parents taking an active role in discussing the internet and sites therein with your children.
Just the other day in fact, I turned off access to YouTube and Safari within the iPhones and iPod Touches that my 7 and 9 year olds use. I simply could not monitor what they were looking at, the sites they were interacting with and what they were doing in general. It was followed by a talk by my wife and I with them on why we did this. And don’t think that the conversation simply ends with that, it’s a regular thing, especially in my highly technology-enabled family.
Tony and I had an important discussion about the types of things that you can do to make your home Internet-enabled environment just a bit more safe for your kids. We also spent a few minutes discussing some survey results related to Internet Usage by children. I was actually pretty surprised by the results of the study. My interview is posted below (and available on YouTube here). After the video are some of the study results as well as some recommendations from Tony (which I agree with).
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Last week, Robert Scoble (Scobleizer.com), Mark Hachman (PCMag.com) Xavier Lanier (Notebooks.com & GottaBeMobile.com ) and I squished into a Ford Explorer to get a preview of some new safety technology that Ford and other auto manufacturers are starting to develop. With this new tech, appropriately outfitted cars actually “talk” to each other, many times a second, sending information about speed, proximity, location and other data points, creating what amounts to a 360 bubble of communication around the car.
Cool right? Well, the even cooler thing is that Ford isn’t the only manufacturer working on this technology, pretty much all of the main automobile manufacturers (e.g., Ford, General Motors, Nissan, Honda, Toyota, Volkswagen, Audi, Mercedes, Hyundai, and Kia) are working together to develop this communication and safety technology. Also, Ford is working with the federal government to ensure that standards are met when this technology is rolled out.
Technology Preview Video
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