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We're parents, we're kids, and we have strong opinions and big questions about screens: TV, computer, game systems, cell phones.

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Archive for December, 2007

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Digital milestones

Thursday, December 20th, 2007

Check out the Wall Street Journal today for a great article about how younger and younger kids are asking for electronics this holiday season. One really useful piece of information in the story is a graph illustrating the average a child begins using various devices – phones, computers, audio players, etc. And, even better, the graph compares […]

Oooh, that makes me crazy…

Wednesday, December 19th, 2007

Some things about screens can be absolutely aggravating for parents. What are your parenting tech pet peeves? (Maybe it’s what the hardware or software does, or maybe it’s what the user does.) Here are my top three:

“Wait! I can’t exit until I finish this level.”
The message that says you can’t install the game your child […]

Wii karma

Tuesday, December 18th, 2007

This is a present-day morality story, if there ever was one: The tale of one father’s generosity, a son’s foolishness, his forfeighted treasure, and the treasure recouped 100-fold (by the generous father only). But the moral may well be to be careful what you pay on eBay.
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What every parent should know about game ratings

Monday, December 17th, 2007

I was recently talking with a friend — a parent of teens — who said she suspected game developers purposely insert violence and questionable content deep enough into a game so that when parents “test” a game through play, they never reach it. While that’s possible, it seems unlikely, given the process used to rate video […]

Build your vocabulary

Thursday, December 13th, 2007

Yesterday, Merriam-Webster announced that the 2007 Word of the Year is W00t (note the two zeros, not o’s). It’s an expression of joy, like “yay,” that is common in gamer-speak. The word was voted on by visitors to the company’s Web site and does not guarantee the word will be included in the next edition of […]

I heart LUV

Wednesday, December 12th, 2007

 
Southwest Airlines, that is. Why? Well, it’s definitely not because of the airline’s seating policy, which I find to be family-unfriendly. But my psyche smiles like a happy little emoticon when I discover places where technology is used to benefit kids. And today I stumbled on one of those places as I was meandering around […]

Seven fun ways to keep in touch while traveling

Saturday, December 8th, 2007

So, you travel for work sometimes, and you connect with your kids in the classic manner: a phone call each night. That may work just fine, but sometimes it’s fun to shake things up a bit and connect in different ways, using the marvels of modern technology. Here are seven ways to mix it up […]

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