What are the implications of new media for parenting?

New media is dramatically affecting parenting in the new high tech world. It can bring parents out of touch with their children, a younger generation which can grasp new technology at a faster rate then adults. It can also be a helpful tool that parents can use to help develop a child.
We know that new media helps connect people and bring them together but what happens when there is a dramatic difference of how parents and children use, are connected, and understand any given media? When a parent sees a video game as a silly device that can give you a couple hours of entertainment then you are completely disconnected from it. A child on the other hand defines several relationships and has a second life through this same video game. The parent’s preconceived notions hinder their ability to understand the child's connectivity with the video game.

Children can have a complete identity through new media. Children become attached to these medias. Some redefine who they are through new medias while other simply become more connective to friends and acquaintances. Wither they connect through chat rooms, social networks, text messaging, online gaming communities, or MUDs the connection to the new media is becoming more real each day they use these devices.

A good example of this is the Daniel Patrick story. The day after the incident the headline was "How being prevented from playing a video game drove a sixteen year old to kill his parents." The gist of the event was that Daniel Patrick tried to sneak halo 3 into his father’s house to play it after his father had banned the game from the household. The father then took the game and locked it in his gun safe. The boy was able to open the gun safe and get the game and his father’s gun. He then executed his parents in there bed. He told them he had a surprise and they should close their eyes. Then he shot them both in the head.

This is by far not the normal behavior but it shows in extreme case of separation while in regular life the separation isn't this great. Another example of how poorly defined preconceived notions of a new media help guide a separation between parents and their children are cell phones. A child gets a new cell phone and views it as an entertainment center they can customize. They change the background, the ring tone, and menus. The child will use the cell phone for text messaging, games, Internet, and other applications. A parent on the other hand would view a new cell phone more as just a mechanism to make phone calls and not much else. A new cell phone of course will achieve both of these.

Another example of this conceptual separation between generational gaps is “A Rape in Cyberspace” by Julian Dibbell. This article is another example of very strong and real connections that can be created by new media. In the article a girl’s avatar in a MOO is taken over by someone else in the MOO. The girl’s avatar is forced to do explicit sexual things that the owner of the avatar would never actually do with her avatar. The owner of the avatar had lots of emotional connections to the MOO and the MOO community that witnessed this event take place. All these intrapersonal relationships were damaged through the cyber rape that took place. The owner was scared to show up to the MOO after the event. This is a reality that most vivid Internet users have come across in one way or another. Most parents have never dealt with any of these issues and would find it extremely difficult to conceptually grasp or give advice about what to do with respect to these events.

New media doesn’t always just divide parents and child. New media can in fact help parents with developing their young child. The example of this that I'm going to use is of the newest media type. It is a new media that is still in the conceptual and prototype stages. This new media is not in circulation yet but I am helping to design, build, and create this new device as my senior project for researchers at the U of U.

In technical terms this new media is software that enables any Android phone "to assist with time management, working memory, and executive function for students, especially those with ADHD." In laymen terms it is a cellular phone that is given to children by parents. The phone then with a credit system tries to teach the child to focus on tasks that are given at school and by his/her parents. When a student correctly puts a task into the cell phone an automated server then gives credit to the student. The phone blocks the student from various tasks such as calls/text/playing games/downloading content/browsing the web/etc... but when the student has credits he can in turn use the credits to make the cell phone give him the ability to do the various actives.

Other new medias to help the parents with children is online parenting communities and video calls. Video calls allow a parent to travel and still have face-to-face time with their child. Now parents can stay better connected with their children while they are away with video calling such as Skype. We talked about how the generational gap can hurt the parent and child relationship with cell phones, but many cell phone providers try to help connect the family with free family talk. Free family talk is the concept that when you use your cell phone to talk to other family members none of your minutes gets used. Therefore encouraging family members to talk more often.

Lastly a controversial tool for helping parents is the sex offender registry. This was mentioned very shortly during my living the e-life class today while discussing eightmaps.com. This lets parents know where sex offenders live around them which is of obvious help to the parents and maybe a right of privacy violation according to some people's definition of right to privacy.