Parents: Don't Miss Online Opportunities with Kids

Parents: Here's some good advice I want to pass on from the MacArthur Foundation session on kids and digital media. It comes from Henry Jenkins, the director of MIT's Comparative Media Studies Program and a MacArthur grantee, who says he has seen two predominate reactions by parents to their kids' online activities: Either they ignore them completely, or they snoop behind their backs to find out what they're doing.

The advice parents often get doesn't help: Limit screen time. Use monitoring programs to see where kids are going on the Internet. Neither is terribly effective without involving kids in making smart decisions on what they do and say and where they go on the Internet.

"There's an opportunity for parents to be actively involved in helping their kids use media to learn," Jenkins said. But many parents are missing the chance to engage in a dialogue with their kids about what they are learning, as well as ethics and responsible behavior online.

"I think about every parent who has suffered through an interminable baseball game or an off-key band concert to support their children's education, but they won't consider sitting down and asking to look at their MySpace pages or play a video game."

That hits home. I've cheered lots of baseball games and concerts, but I've never asked to play MLB '06: The Show with my son to find out what he loves about it and what he may be learning from it. My inclination is to limit it, often for good reasons. I want him to read good books and get outside to play, and there are only so many non-school hours in a week. But Jenkins makes me realize I need to take a closer look at what my kids are learning when they make a movie and edit it on the computer, or play a video game they love.

When fear of the unknown guides our decisions as parents in how we steer our kids online, we miss the opportunity to talk to them and help them make good, safe judgments about where they go on the web and what they say and do while there.

Says Jenkins: "I'd like to see more informed decisions, not a blind striking out against anything new that was not a part of parents' childhoods."

Well said. What do you think? What's your approach to guiding your kids onlne?