Internet Parenting, Parental Controls, & Online Safety Blog - WebCurfew

By Amy Kristine Williams -- I love privacy. It’s one of the foundations of our society - and when our lives are kept private, it’s so much easier to be who we want to be, without worrying so much about what others think. Maybe that’s why teens are so enamored with the internet - many of them still haven’t discovered who they are, and the chance to cut loose and feel like they belong must be amazing.

A recent study by Iowa State University (ISU), and published in JAMA Pediatrics, found that children behave better, do better in school, get more sleep, and see other health benefits when parents limit content and the amount of time they spend on the computer, in front of the TV, or other connected devices.

The school year is almost over… and summer is just around the corner. I can sense it. This has been a brutal winter almost everywhere around the country, but especially here in Chicago where I live. Now that the weather is getting warmer, the first thing that comes to my mind is, “how can I spend more time outside?”

Hello everyone, I am Alberto Moriondo, and I will start contributing to the Digital Loitering Blog. I thought I would share with you an interview that I just did for BlueSky Innovation, a Chicago-Tribune website focusing on news, analysis and events related to innovation and entrepreneurship

The holiday season is by now a distant memory for most people (except perhaps for the credit card bills) but many parents are suffering from digital whiplash as they try and figure out how their child became so addicted to the internet-enabled consumer electronics device they bought them for Christmas!

Cyberbullying….would you know if your child has been a victim of it, a witness to it, or perhaps even a perpetrator of it? Most parents think they know what cyberbullying is. However, you may be surprised to learn it’s a lot more expansive than you think.

In my last Digital Loitering blog post I revealed my biased towards the act of playing a video game over the act of play a musical instrument. I admitted feeling that somehow playing endless hours of video games felt like a timewaster, while spending the equivalent amount of time play an instrument somehow felt like a more useful endeavor.

It’s been my experience that when kids go on-line in their free time, they usual have a primary task in mind to accomplish. It might be to update their Facebook page or check a friends wall. Or it might be to pick up where they left off in an on-line game. Or maybe it’s just to look for more cute kitten YouTube videos to watch. Whatever their purpose, they do seem to have a particular reason that motivates them to jump on the internet initially each time...Initially….