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Navigating the Digital World

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Some Suggestions for Parents as They Help
Their Daughters Navigate the Digital World

Lisa Damour, PhD
Consulting Psychologist and Co-Director of the Center for Research for Girls
Laurel School

  • Teach your daughter that all digital content is potentially public and permanent.
    • Remind your daughter that any content she shares digitally might be seen by you, her current teachers, future teachers, future admissions officers, future employers, and so on.
    • Take time at the dinner table to talk about news stories pertaining to public figures who are damaged by their own digital activity.  These conversations may help your daughter to understand that digital environments are clearly not private.
    • Point out that these rules apply to everyone who uses digital media, not just children and teenagers.  Wise adults are also careful about which method of communication they use for which kinds of messages.  In other words, thoughtful adults have delicate or charged conversations in person or by phone and reserve digital media for content that could comfortably be made public.

  • Monitor your daughter’s digital activity.
    • Doing so reinforces the important message that the internet is a public space.  If your daughter requests a Facebook page (or its equivalent), you can ask that she share her password with you and/or “friend” you as a condition of her Facebook membership.
    • Decide how often you should monitor your daughter’s digital activity based on your knowledge of your daughter’s maturity level.  Some girls can be trusted to regulate their own digital behavior quite ably; others require closer supervision.
    • Monitoring your daughter’s digital activity usefully allows her to blame her good behavior on you.  In other words, it is more likely that a teenager will tell a peer to stop sending inappropriate messages “because my dad checks my Facebook/phone” rather than because “your messages make me uncomfortable.”
    • Consider restricting digital technology use to the public spaces of your home.  Removing digital technology from your daughter’s bedroom will help her sleep better at night and help ensure that her use is appropriate.
    • For younger girls, consider making a rule that restricts her computer use to computers that you know are monitored: those at home and at school.  You do not want to make this policy after you learn that your daughter has been exposed to inappropriate digital content while on a poorly supervised playdate.
    • Let your daughter know that it is safe for her to tell you if she stumbles upon something overwhelming, frightening, or confusing in the digital environment; don’t be afraid to ask your daughter about any content of hers that confuses or surprises you.
    • If someone is unkind to your daughter in a digital space, teach her to alert you, print and keep a copy of the content, and refrain from responding.
    • Limit the amount of time you need to monitor your daughter’s digital activity.  After-school activities and technology-free times can make the job of monitoring her use a bit less demanding.  Though girls often balk at the idea of “taking a break” from digital technology, most are clearly more relaxed and happy when required to do so.
    • Make and enforce the rules that work for your family; feel free to ban texting at the dinner table and anything else that your daughter says that “everyone else” is allowed to do.
    • Remind your daughter that - like any other privilege - the use of digital technology is contingent upon acting responsibly.  The privilege of using digital technology can be lost (at least temporarily) if her use is irresponsible.

  • Bearing in mind that all children live up – and down – to expectations, focus on digital technology as the problem, not your daughter’s potential behavior.
    • Remember “kids today” are not so different from kids of past, the digital environment just allows them to make universal impulses (to say something mean, to be curious about sexual content, to want to get the attention of a potential romantic partner, etc.) public and permanent.
    • Remind your daughter that social interactions in digital spaces often go awry because digital technology lacks tone, the look on a person’s face, and other useful forms of interpersonal feedback.  Point out that good people sometimes do and say things in a digital environment that they would never do in person.
    • Point out that adults are also vulnerable to the magnetic pull of technology and model the relationship with digital media that you would like for your daughter to adopt.  (No texting at the dinner table for you either!)

  • Actively seek out opportunities for your daughter to enjoy real privacy.
    • By age 11, normally developing children want privacy; they often begin to close their bedroom doors to do the same things they used to do with their doors open.
    • Children today enjoy much less privacy - or time away from active monitoring by adults – than most of today’s adults enjoyed as children.  By some reports, children spend 50% less time outside today than they did 20 years ago.
    • When adults think back to their own childhoods, they often have warm memories of time spent alone, roaming the neighborhood with friends, playing in the woods, and so on.  The salience of these memories likely speaks to the developmental importance of having unsupervised time while growing up.
    • It may be that girls look to digital technology as an opportunity to have “private time” with friends.  Unfortunately – for the many reasons listed above – digital technology is a poor substitute for real privacy.
    • You will likely feel more at ease restricting and monitoring your daughter’s digital technology use if you provide ample opportunities for real privacy: phone calls, having friends to the house, neighborhood roaming, camp, etc.