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Lately parenting forums have been buzzing with parents looking for ideas how to keep their teenagers from spending a lot of time on the computer and Internet. It seems that teenagers these days are hooked on the computer just as they were hooked on watching television just a decade ago. Whether they are logging into MySpace, downloading songs from iTunes, blogging, chatting with each other over IM, or spacing out surfing the Web, mounting proof shows that teen computer use may in a great deal of cases be classified as either a obligation or even an addiction. How do you recognise as a parent when your teen’s computer use is going too far? There is no easy litmus test here. If your teen loves to play online games, he may not be alone. However, if your teen seems to be sacrificing social prospects or spending more than 25 hours a week in the online gaming arena, possibly something is wrong. One of the Internet’s most standard games, the World of Warcraft, is a self-contained online world with millions of dissimilar players from dozens of countries around the world. This online realm sucks teenagers in easily, and some have been known to stay on the World of Warcraft website for more than 70 or 80 active hours per week. Today’s teenager also has access to a assortment of services available on the computer and over the Internet. Instead of using the telephone, they use instant messaging. They don’t get their pictures printed at the corner drugstore anymore but upload digital pictures to MySpace and sharing them with friends and anybody else instantly. Even the ever-present radio or stereo have fallen out of vogue because the computer has much better sound and it is attached woofer makes the room vibrate even more. Watching a movie on television has been substituted with playing a DVD on the computer. Teens may even do their homework and school projects on the computer. Considering that some people get addicted to the Internet, parents will have to be competent to recognize when their teen is developing a bad habit. The isolating, repetitious nature of computer work in usual may be stunting in terms of development. In addition, parents must be concerned if their teens are not getting sufficient exercise, nutrition and sleep. A friend of mine told me just a few days ago “I caught my 11 year old son playing games on the Internet at four o”clock in the morning!” What Parents may do I have expended most of my time on the computer writing this book for the last few months. Since our kids tend to do as they see more oftentimes than they do as they are told, I know this would not be a good time to fetch this subject up with my daughter. To establish a good and argument-proof plan when approaching your teen to talk about this topic, it is critical that you know incisively what your teenager is doing while on the computer and how much time he is spending on each peculiar activity. Establish which activenesses you will allow, and what Web internet sites or activenesses are off limit.
Your plan likewise needs to include how much time you will concede for each action and how a good deal of hours you are more than willing to concede per week. The Internet has become an unsafe place for teens in some respects, so you also might consider one of the software packages available that grant you to set parental controls similar to the parental controls which block sure TV programs. Be prepared for your teenager’s question: “What do you want me to do instead?” Set an example yourself. If you’re an online junky or a solitaire addict, cut back on your computer use to provide a good example. Take time to connect with your teenager and to fetch your family together for non-computer/TV affiliated activities, and you’ll likely see computer use decrease. Christina Botto has been involved with helping parents and teenagers resolve perplexed issues for more than 14 years, looking at and manufacturing parenting strategies. Her commitment to helping parents inspired her to write her book, Help Me With My Teenager! A Step-by-step Guide for Parents that Works.
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