getkidsinternetsafe

Is There a Secret to Awesome Parenting?

May 7, 2014 by Dr. Tracy Bennett

All of us find it challenging sometimes to meet our obligations AND be an awesome parent. I hope this blog inspires you to be present and engaged with your kids today in a way that fills your heart and soul.

There is a secret to being an awesome parent! It also comes with a bonus feature of being the secret to life. It takes deliberate effort, but it’s fun and easy and requires you to fill your heart like you did as a child.

FLOOD YOUR BRAIN WITH HAPPINESS

AND

SHARE IT!!

Immediately upon reading this, did you…

A. Nod knowingly with a gentle, celebratory smile?
OR
B. Roll your eyes back with an exhale of defeat?

Your reaction determines which camp cabin you’ll create today, A) Camp Champion or B) Camp Naysayer?

Did you go to summer camp when you were little? If not, I bet you wanted to. Summer camp is every child’s dream; camp counselors with silly names like Skeeter, dirty sneakers, chili burgers, adventurous hikes, giggling skits, flashlight duels, and scary midnight sounds. Summer camp is a regular, magic-child-day multiplied by extra special. As a parent, you design and model which camp cabin your kids dwell in everyday. It’s all about how you “skeeter” it. Today, make it extra special.

As a child psychologist, I’ve learned how to capture, delight, and light up my little patients the minute they walk in the waiting room. My husband calls it my “sunshine” and often comments on the evident power of providing a ray of light to my patients. Once I capture their little hearts by showing them how they throw a sparkle into my day, they become deeply engaged in the alliance and work hard to meet their goals. After a session, Camp Champion parents feel the momentum, take the baton, and lead their children to victory. The sunshine is easy to elicit and it invigorates me. Honestly, I’m blessed to have my heart flooded with it many times a day. Psychologists call this being mindful and engaged.

Children thrive in Camp Champion, where wonder, delight, and magic blossom spontaneously. Beds get made by leprechauns, toothbrushes create swirls of sparkling fairy dust, pop songs get belted out with grand flourish, zigzag paths spring between rooms, and a lurching zombie cooks breakfast and pack lunches while dramatically dragging his broken foot behind him.

During magic moments, creative conversation blossoms and allows you to become fully aware of your children and what is important to them. The material from your mutual delight will seed private jokes and silly shticks that will provide delightful hits of entertainment to sprinkle throughout a day, everyday.

With so much to do and distractions pulling at your attention, it is easy for the home/cabin to become Camp Naysayer. If you get sucked into the vortex of business, your kids will find things to do on their own, complain of being bored when really they’re lonely, and they’ll seek solace with too much screen time. Some independent play and screen time is awesome, but every day, all day is too much. And I suspect that if you’re the leader of the Naysayer cabin, you too are lost behind your screen and also feeling busy, but bored…and lonely.

As a Mom, I’m aware that it’s impossible to spend all day in magical playtime. At this very moment while I’m writing this blog, The Babies (what we call the little ones even though they are now 12 and 10 years old) are orbiting me like long-legged chattering planets. My daughter is sitting on the stool next to me happily prattling about the visit I just promised her to the lamb barn this afternoon where we will volunteer time shoveling hay and feeding bottles to tiny lambs. Meanwhile, my 10 year-old son, not quite as infatuated with shoveling, is negotiating a pre-adventure visit to the shaved ice spot complete with rainbow flavors. My thoughts are engaged in no fewer than four different places. But I’m taking my own advice. When they talk I stop my activity, look them straight in the eye, and share a smile. Work can wait for this precious moment. With my oldest away at college now, I’m aware these moments are fleeting. My soul holds on to our magic moment memories like a direct feed to my life source.

Today be Camp Champion and skeeter your daily activities. When the kids aren’t around, block off some time to do your work and accomplish it without distraction. THEN, block off playtime with your kids. When you first lay eyes on them, soak them in with gratefulness and let them see your enthusiasm for the magic they bring into the room. Throw your sunshine, get amped, smile big, and challenge them to an adventure for champions!! They will buzz with excitement.

If you have a friend who is excellent at Camp Champion or who has earned a precious day with his/her babies, pass on GetKidsInternetSafe.com. I’d also love to hear about your magic moments in the comments!

Love makes us happy and time brings us love. Honor it. Cheers to a day of engagement with your kids rather than your technology.

Onward to More Awesome Parenting,

Tracy S. Bennett, Ph.D.
Mom, Clinical Psychologist, CSUCI Adjunct Faculty
GetKidsInternetSafe.com

Photo credit:

Love by Shena Pamela, CC by-NC-by-SA 2.0

“But MOM, There’s NOTHING Else to Doooooo”: 12 Fun Family Activities That Don’t Involve Electronics

April 30, 2014 by Dr. Tracy Bennett

Last week I challenged you to take an accounting of each family member’s technology use in preparation for seeking more technology/family time balance. If you are looking for ways to spend more time together, here are some fun family activities that even the most technologically-dependent child or teen will enjoy.

1. Take a two-hour trail ride on horseback.

2. Go bowling.

3. Take a bus or train to a neighboring community for a day trip.

4. Go roller skating or ice skating.

5. Visit a museum.

6. Take a local hike.

7. Rent bicycles and search out a new bike path.

8. Go to the zoo.

9. Volunteer at the local animal shelter.

10. Serve a meal at a homeless shelter.

11. Take a firehouse tour.

12. Eat at a new restaurant, maybe even with food from a different culture.

13. Make a fort!!! (Rebelling again: why stop at 12)

Onward To More Awesome Parenting,

Tracy S. Bennett, Ph.D.
Mom, Clinical Psychologist, CSUCI Adjunct Faculty
GetKidsInternetSafe.com

When all else fails, you can alway torment your children for fun at home. BatDad is our fav.

Is the Pot Raising the Kettle? Good Tech Habits and Moms Hiding From Their Kids In the Bathroom.

April 23, 2014 by Dr. Tracy Bennett

For years I have met my girlfriends for Friday morning coffee, sharing all that makes up our lives, our celebrations and our grief. I have come to deeply treasure these friendships, not just because these women make me laugh and inspire me in so many ways, but also because we are compassionate witnesses to each other’s successes and failures. Some weeks it’s as if we are having a who-had-the-biggest-parenting-failure-this-week contest; the more ridiculous the screw-up, the harder we laugh.

Like most parents, we admit to our families’ struggles to maintain a healthy balance with technology use and family togetherness. Even during our coffee hour, we are frequently guilty of grabbing our smart phones to schedule shared events, look up book and movie titles, share photos, and even pass it around to view a funny video. This Friday, we shared our experiences with technology vacations.

A technology vacation is when a parent enforces a strict NO ELECTRONICS POLICY with the whole family, which may range from part of a day to several weeks. As a psychologist, I recommend this to clients on occasion. Not only does it break some nasty overuse habits, but it also helps family members recognize technology dependencies and takes the electronic distractions away from family togetherness and other important activities.

I am admittedly a heavy technology user, as are my husband and three children. I rely on alarmed reminders to keep track of events and use texting with clients and university students for efficient scheduling. I love FaceBook and read novels on my iPad. My oldest daughter regularly makes fun of me for taking selfies and scolds me on occasions when I interrupt family time to answer an incoming text. Coincidentally, just moments before I sat to write this blog, Morgan took my picture while I texted in the kitchen, announcing to her siblings, “Here’s Mom in her natural habitat!”

I’m good-natured about Morgan’s teasing, just as she is about mine. It’s true that texting helps me feel connected and gives me a genuine laugh here and there. It is not something I want to give up completely. It also humbles me, so I’m realistic about challenging my kids to turn off the beloved Minecraft in favor of fort building outside. Moderation is key.

Friday, my girlfriends and I stated our intentions to put our smartphones aside during the upcoming week with grand plans for uninterrupted family interaction. Among tips and encouragement, our guilty stories emerged while we laughed. One of my girlfriends has been particularly ambitious and has designated every Sunday technology-free. As we all expressed our admiration, she boldly admitted that she’s not 100% successful disciplining herself, sometimes disappearing into the bathroom to sneak in guilty smartphone time. The rest of us empathized, admitting how our teenagers often get appalled at our technology cheating. Self-righteously and dishonestly, we claim to be performing essential parenting activities rather than admitting to our actual frivolous FaceBook check.

As we assess Internet safety with GetKidsInternetSafe.com, perhaps this is a good week for you to assess family technology habits. Through the coming weeks, be deliberately observant of the time and activities logged on electronic devices, both for yourselves and your kids. Let us know what you notice, your trials and tribulations. Over time, I will offer immediately actionable changes that you can implement to better protect your children and teens from unhealthy use patterns and potentially dangerous Internet activities.

The first step is insight and accountability, especially over your own technology use.

Challenging family members to technology journaling is a good start. Maybe even make some fun predictions.

Suggested daily notations include time logged, location, and simultaneous activities:

• Texting
• Gaming
• Watching television and movies
• Using social media
• Internet surfing
• Video chatting

At this point, I recommend that you simply collect data rather than impulsively restrict technology use. Obviously, intervene if you observe anything that compromises safety. The optimal goal is to make change a cooperative family activity, not a punishing restriction that will be met with resentment and opposition.

1. BE PATIENT AND DELIBERATE. Educate yourself BEFORE you plan intervention.

2. BE TRANSPARENT and share your intent and your observations with your kids. Better yet, invite them to share their observations.

3. HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOR and an inquisitive attitude, and don’t be offended by their finger-pointing and defensiveness.

4. Remember, TECHNOLOGY IS NOT THE ENEMY and must be embraced and enjoyed. Black-and-white thinking is a mistake; achieving balance is the goal.

Join me in committing to more responsible use so that together we can model control and safety despite technology’s temptations. Share your observations and challenges along the way. If this is useful to you, share GetKidsInternetSafe.com with friends. Not only is friendly support comforting, but laughter and guilty confessions are an excellent way to lighten your day.

Onward to More Awesome Parenting,

Tracy S. Bennett, Ph.D.
Mom, Clinical Psychologist, CSUCI Adjunct Faculty
GetKidsInternetSafe.com

Click here for some funny examples of how “The Pot” can be textilarious! (Morgan LOVES when I make up slang).

Study Tricks to Turn D’s to A’s

April 16, 2014 by Dr. Tracy Bennett

As a tech immigrant, I learned to study with notes and books. But over time. I’ve increasingly integrated screen technology as an essential learning tool. Having grown up in the Digital Age, kids are technology natives who use screen technology as their base. Tech use is amazing! But it can be difficult to manage. That’s why they need parental help more than ever navigating the road to learning.

The role of educational science is to determine the best methods to facilitate successful learning. Encouraging student metacognition is among a teacher’s (and parent’s) most important and challenging tasks. Metacognition refers to student knowledge about their cognitive processes and the ability to organize, monitor, and modify these processes as a function of learning. In other words, metacognition is “thinking about thinking.”

Today’s GKIS article offers tools to help you become the best life learner you can be.

DR. BENNETT’S ROAD MAP FOR LEARNING

1. Learn from the get-go.

Don’t waste a moment. Be an active learner the minute you come into contact with the material. Actively engage with the content while you read the textbook, take notes in class, and watch the videos. Participating in class also helps deep processing of the material!

2. Learn while you format study materials.

Outline the text and rewrite and highlight your notes. Attend to and connect the main concepts. Leave out illustrative details so you have only essential material (fewer pages) to memorize.

3. Set the stage to study.

Block out sufficient study time over several days using a block-scheduling download from the Internet. Prepare yourself and your study space. Make sure you are comfortable and fit (fed, hydrated, rested) with a positive attitude about studying. Find a comfortable, non-distracting study location. Turn off your devices and other notifications and commit to studying only, no social media or Internet surfing.

4. Engage with content, don’t kill and drill.

For a student to learn effectively, they must engage with the content and integrate it into a meaningful framework. Students often make the mistake of mindlessly rehearsing isolated facts, thinking time spent is evidence of learning. Kill and drill is a waste of time and mind-numbingly punishing. Deeply processing information is the best way to learn. That means you must find ways to make the content meaningful to you.

5. Create learning pathways.

Each time we encode a fact into the hippocampal area (memory center) of our brain, we create a learning pathway to that content. That pathway can then be traveled later for retrieval at test time. Increasing the number of pathways to that encoded fact is the process of effective learning.

In items 2 and 3 of this list, you already paved the initial pathways! The first pathways were laid down when you listened to the lecture, wrote notes, read the textbook, answered the teacher’s questions, and formatted study materials.

To pave additional pathways to test content, find creative ways to further engage with and elaborate on the material while you study. The more emotionally and cognitively meaningful the material is for you, the easier it will be to learn. For example, use the Internet to view the study material in a variety of vivid formats, such as illustrative maps, diagrams, pictures, speeches, or videos. Link the information to emotionally meaningful memories or associated topics. Study from a variety of locations. Form a study group and talk with others about the content.

6. Rehearse the information and practice retrieving it and applying it just like you would at test time.

If the test is multiple-choice, make up questions that would lead to memorized facts. If the test is an essay, practice outlining and writing essays on that material. If the test is open-note, open-book, organize and tab your materials so you can get to them quickly and prep for the best internet search terms.

7. Study small chunks of material at a time over several days, eventually linking the chunks together.

Don’t cram at the last minute. Your brain needs time to deeply process newly learned material. It will even process when you’re not actively studying, even in your sleep! That means it’s best to learn and rehearse chunks of material over several days. By test time, the chunks will come together for easy, A+ retrieval.

Voila!! This is the recipe for excellent learning. By my junior year at UCLA, I had mastered these skills. This allowed me to get excellent grades with relatively few hours of non-punishing study. As a university professor, I now witness how the A-students successfully apply these techniques.

View my free video, “How to Study Effectively: Metacognition in Action” below which further illustrates my ROAD MAP FOR LEARNING.

Onward to More Awesome Parenting,

Tracy S. Bennett, Ph.D.
Mom, Clinical Psychologist, CSUCI Adjunct Faculty
GetKidsInternetSafe.com

If you want to see this video in HD on YouTube click here

Did You Know the Internet is Programmed Like a Slot Machine? 6 Ways Internet Marketers Are Grooming Our Kids to Be Paying Customers

January 22, 2014 by Dr. Tracy Bennett

When we are online, we often view content designed to get us to buy something. Companies and people who make money this way are called online marketers. The more customers these marketers attract, the more money they make. Today’s GKIS article teaches you how to recognize the tricks marketers use to earn money. If you are able to recognize these tricks, you will be more likely to avoid buying things you don’t need or want.

6 Tricks Marketers Use to Encourage You to Buy

Neuromarketing Strategies

Neuromarketing strategies refer to the tricks created from research that studies customer motivations, preferences, and buying behaviors. With customer data collected from brain scans (which areas of the brain engage with certain ad content), eye movement tracking, and customer reports, marketers design their products and advertisements for the best appeal. This means that advertisers know what we respond to and how we respond better than we even know!

Illusion of Scarcity

The illusion of scarcity refers to the technique of only offering a product or a discount for a limited time. By using terms like BUY NOW or LIMITED-TIME OFFER, marketers make us anxious to click the buy button quickly without thinking it through. Adults are better at taking their time before buying than kids are. Not only have adults had more experience and practice, but their brains are more developed to control buying impulses. Most people believe that using these tricks on kids is unfair and unreasonable.

Pester Power

Once a child wants something, they will pester and beg their parents to buy it for them. Parents then buy the item to make their kids happy, sometimes without thinking enough about it. Pester power leads to more family stress and unnecessary purchases.

Packaging Tricks

We buy things if they look great and if we think they would be fun or good for us. That is why marketers spend a lot of money on design and use certain words and images that suggest the product is healthy even if it isn’t, like calling sugary flavors “fruit flavors.”

Using Slot Machine Reward Schedules

We will keep doing something if we are rewarded for it (get something for doing it). Video gaming companies know this. That is why they offer lots of rewards (like points, levels, weapons, and access to other players), so we keep playing and spending.

Psychology studies have shown that the best way to keep somebody playing is by giving them a variable ratio of reinforcement. This means the player is rewarded after an unpredictable number of responses (e.g., sometimes after three clicks, sometimes after one, and sometimes after twelve). There is no set pattern; it’s variable.

Slot machines are also set with a variable ratio of reinforcement because it is the best formula to keep people playing. Gaming companies apply a variable ratio of reinforcement within gaming design to keep players playing too. This can lead to losing control over the time we spend playing, which can lead to unhealthy screen use.

Too much reward can also overload your nervous system and stress you out without you realizing it. If you are cranky after gameplay, it may be that you’ve played too long or should opt for a mellower game.

Aspirational Marketing

Aspirational marketing refers to the technique of making the customer aspire, or wish, to be like the celebrity or influencer selling the product or to be happy like other customers seem to be.

Children’s brains are wired to copy people they look up to. This makes them vulnerable to this trick.

Parents must look out for ads that sell inappropriate things to young kids like sexy clothing, make-over products, rated-R movies, violent or sexual video games, music with inappropriate lyrics, processed and high-sugar, high-fat foods, and other things that aren’t good for kids.

What do psychologists have to say about marketers targeting kids?

In the last twenty years, people have been speaking out about concerns that young children are being specifically targeted by online marketers. In 2004, the American Psychological Association (APA) released a special task force report addressing these concerns.

They concluded that advertising to kids is unfair and promotes the use of harmful products to kids. They recommended that:

more research be conducted,
new policies be adopted like restricting advertising to children 8 years of age and under, and
developing media literacy programs starting in the third grade.

Other countries have responded to these concerns. For example, television marketing to children was banned in Norway and Sweden, junk-food ads were banned in Britain, and war toys were banned in Greece. America is far behind.

Parents and teachers are our children’s only real defense against sneaky online marketers. Although teaching kids about these tricks is a good start, it may place unfair expectations on children. Even knowing the tricks, they often still can’t stop themselves. They don’t have the brain development to do that yet.

We Can Make a Difference

Not only must parents adopt smart online management strategies, but they must also demand changes within the online world and advocate for new laws.

Recent changes in child nutrition are excellent examples of how change can start at home and lead to effective progress within the broader community. For example, due to parents determined to make positive changes in California elementary and middle schools, soft drinks were banned, and healthier food choices were offered.

We can impact what happens to our kids on the internet too! What do you think about formal advertising regulations? Should the government step in or is it the responsibility of the parents? How much regulation is too much? Is there enough regulation already?

If you are ready to reduce the marketing aimed at your kids, check out our Screen Safety Toolkit. Designed to offer tried-and-true links and descriptions of free and for-sale safety products at the device level, this course gives you what you need to increase online safety for your family.

Onward To More Awesome Parenting,

Tracy S. Bennett, Ph.D.
Mom, Clinical Psychologist, CSUCI Adjunct Faculty
GetKidsInternetSafe.com

The Psychological Mind Tricks of Online Neuromarketers

January 21, 2014 by Dr. Tracy Bennett

The commercialization of childhood refers to the fact that companies advertise to kids through websites, video games, and social media. These marketers use sneaky tricks that most adults aren’t even aware of! Before screen devices, we partly blocked advertising to kids since they don’t yet know how to defend themselves. Manipulating kids into thinking they MUST have a product for happiness is unfair. Convincing them that they need something can also make them anxious and feel bad about themselves. Advertising can be harmful to kids. Today’s GetKidsInternetSafe (GKIS) article was written to teach tweens and teens about the sneaky techniques that marketers use to get their money.

How an Experiment with a Rat Taught Me About Operant Conditioning

When I was at UCLA, I took a physiological psychology class. We learned how to study the effects of certain drugs on rats.

Here is how this worked.

Give the rat a drug so she doesn’t feel any pain.
Insert a wire into the pleasure center of her little rat brain.
Attach the wire to an electric source that is controlled by a lever in her cage that she presses with her little paws.
Count every time she pushes her lever to get a small electric charge to her brain’s pleasure center resulting in pleasurable feelings.

We collected two types of data; the number of times she pushed the lever when she was on her medication, and the number of times she pushed the lever when she wasn’t on any medication. If the medication enhanced pleasure, she would push the lever more. If it had no effect, she would push the same amount. If it decreased pleasure, she would push it less.

Because of the “happy inducing” medication assigned to my study group, we found that our rat pushed the lever more when she was on the medication. Not only did my happy rat teach us about the effects of the medication, but she also taught me about how behavior can be manipulated with medication and brain stimulation.

In psychology we call this operant conditioning, meaning the frequency of a behavior (like pushing a lever) is increased with reward and decreased with punishment.

Advertisers Manipulate Us with Operant Conditioning

To get us to buy things, marketers must convince us we need them. To do that, they bake in rewards for buying and punishments for not buying. Sometimes we realize that we are being manipulated, and sometimes we don’t.

Like the rat cage is designed for more lever pushes, advertisements are designed to coax a behavior from us – which is to buy, buy, buy.

Advertising to Children on Screen Devices

In 2006, the Federal Trade Commission reported that food and beverage companies spent 20 billion dollars on advertising targeting children. This often involved cross-promotion with movies or popular television programs.1 With screen devices (like game stations, computers, smartphones, tablets, and handheld game devices), we are exposed to more advertising than ever!

Advertising Techniques Used to Manipulate Kids

Internet marketing influences child brains like the electricity influenced the rat’s brain. Advertisements impact our neurology. That is why advertising designed to influence our brains is called neuromarketing. By persuading you with the company’s messaging (also called branding), you learn to like and trust that brand.

When kids visit websites or play games online, what sneaking advertising tricks might they expect?

Appealing characters that are designed to build brand loyalties at an early age
Banners and popups with lots of color and movement designed to attract and keep their attention
Featured games, puzzles, contests, toys, videos, and appealing activities that are branded to keep kids engaged for long periods of time. The longer you are on screen, the more exposure to the different marketing strategies
Promises of discounts and extra value to encourage pester power (the powerful influence of begging kids on parents’ wallets)
Action commands that create anxiety and spur buying behaviors like BUY NOW, GO NOW, SHOP NOW, PLAY NOW, LEARN MORE

Internet marketing is neither all-good nor all-bad. Sometimes we want to watch advertising content and learn about new things to buy. There is even advertising within online educational products (like the website you are on now). Without customer purchases, companies can’t afford to make cool things.

Young Kids Don’t Yet Have the Brain Abilities to Defend Against Marketing

The good news is that you have found GetKidsInternetSafe.com as a resource to start this educational process and ultimately better educate yourself and your children.

The bad news is that psychological research has demonstrated that, even when trained, children under eight years old lack the cognitive ability to view commercials defensively. In other words, young kids have a limited ability to understand the vocabulary, sentences, and inference drawing required for analyzing marketing schemes. For young kids, visual aspects of advertising dominate informational aspects. Their brains soak in the fun but fail to see the business side of screen time.

Although tweens and teens have the brain wiring to learn the tricks, even with parents helping young kids may still not be able to see them. For this reason, it is important that we limit child exposure to online advertisements and content. Parents must choose what their young kids watch wisely and only allow screen time for short periods of time. As kids grow older and onboard more reasoning abilities, they become less vulnerable to the tricks if they know what they are looking for!

Your Call to Action

Over the next week, I challenge you to change your focus while you are online. Instead of being a passive consumer (watching without thinking), keep an eye out for the marketing strategies embedded within each activity. Notice what tempts you and holds your attention and why. Notice that some strategies push for an immediate sale, while others coax a long-term trusting relationship with the brand to breed familiarity for ongoing sales. Share your observations and your opinions about what is fair play and what isn’t with your friends, parents, and teachers. Pay particular attention to strategies geared toward the adult viewer versus the child viewer.

Next week, I will share with you 6 powerful marketing techniques intended to groom children to be paying customers.

Onward To More Awesome Parenting,

Tracy S. Bennett, Ph.D.
Mom, Clinical Psychologist, CSUCI Adjunct Faculty
GetKidsInternetSafe.com

Anna Lappe asserts that parenting needs to be left to parents – not food marketers, in this TED talk.