A simple thought/question as we approach the weekend: Should cell phones be banned from the bedroom during sleepovers? This hadn’t occurred to me until another parent brought it up, but as I thought about it, it made good sense. Even the best kid can lose good judgment in a group. Especially a group behind closed doors. Especially when holding a way to reach way beyond those doors.

What kind of trouble can kids get into as a group, holed up in a bedroom with a phone, that they wouldn’t on…

I’ve decided not to read my children’s emails, unless I have a reason to be concerned. Sometimes, invading the privacy of kids can have parents squirming.

I have never given much consideration to children’s screen names and safety (except when my tween requested IM privileges with “CandyMan” — who, luckily, turned out to be a female fifth-grade friend and not the predator I’d conjured). So, I was all ears when a local Internet expert offered three great guidelines for safe screen names for kids:
1. Never use a name that indicates whether the child is a boy or girl. Obviously, this includes the child’s actual name.
2. Never use numbers in a screen name…

This week Andy began a new earning enterprise. And his work world looks a whole lot different than mine at his age. Forget mowing lawns (our neighbors don’t have them). Delivering newspapers is out of the question (long ago this job was moved from bike-riding kids to underemployed drivers). Babysitting is out (just not interested). In the 21st century, the best job for underage kids is selling family castoffs on eBay.

He did well with his first item, all the while considering it an experiment. In other words, the bar was…

Even as I’m typing this, I’m installing YahooMessenger on my computer. Why? Because I’m just back from planning the annual technology issue of the magazine I work for, and it turns out that the hot thing that these adults, ages 25 – 55, were talking about was IMing in the work environment and the generational gap that it highlights. This is a topic that we will be covering in our issue, so I figured I should get better acquainted with the Instant Messenger concept and see what…

I have a new and longreaching goal when it comes to technology in our family life: nonjudgment. Here’s why.

Several weeks ago, a friend and I attended a seminar on parenting and technology. The leaders opened up the evening by asking audience members to pose their questions up front, so the questions could be answered during the presentation. I was totally blown away by the intensity of the questions. In fact, three-fourths of the parents who raised their hands actually had very small questions but very large, impassioned rants that surrounded them. As…

Andy and a circle of his friends suddenly want to do nothing but e-mail each other. It’s like they have a developmental urge to text, but have no cell phones. (They’ve come close to IM-ing, but it seems that whenever one friend figures out how to do it, the other forgets…so, frustrated with each other, they say, “Oh, let’s just email.”) A typical email dialogue goes like this:

Andy: That’s so funny.

Friend: What?

Andy: What you said before.

Friend: Yeah.

Andy: Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

Keep in mind that, done with email, this meaningful…