TECH TALK
Building Your Child’s Inner Voice
The overarching theme for Savvy Cyber Kids is that it’s always time for ‘The Tech Talk.’ We believe that parents and educators need ongoing resources to help the young people in their lives be empowered by technology. The complexity of our digital lives will only increase and young people need adults guiding them towards safe and appropriate behavior.
Savvy Cyber Kids encourages parents and caregivers to start having ‘The Tech Talk’ with children at the youngest of ages. As soon as children are holding a screen, they can be taught personal internet safety lessons like protecting personal information and understanding who are strangers in the online world (anyone they don’t know first in real life).
Once ‘The Tech Talk’ starts, it never stops. As the child gets older the cyber safety concepts expand into cyber bullying, digital reputation and technology balance. Even the adolescent sex talk requires radical new approaches in the Digital Age. Parents must have a sex talk version of ‘The Tech Talk’ that includes consent, compliance, predator grooming, pornography and sexting — and at much younger ages than ever before, in order to keep their kids safe.
All of the resources that Savvy Cyber Kids develops are designed to start and continue a ‘Tech Talk’ between a child and an adult in their lives.
Our monthly blog articles on cyber safety and cyber ethics issues keep you in the loop about current technology issues that digital parents should be aware of and talking about. SIGN UP to get our blogs delivered to your inbox monthly, alongside access to all of our free educational resources.
Our weekly Cyber News Feed delivers a weekly email to you of the news that matters to Savvy Cyber Kids. Seen with a cyber safety and cyber ethics lens, these clippings keep us abreast of when technology is used for bad—to inspire us to be aware and make necessary changes in our homes and at our schools. Conversely, when technology is used for good, let’s read all about it, celebrate the successes and bring these lessons home. SIGN UP
Admittedly, the power struggles around screen time balance, the reminders—ahem, nagging—that you seem to unendingly offer on repeat, will try your patience. So, pause to acknowledge this: You are building the inner voice of your child that will become the benchmark of how he or she moderates adult life. While a parental controls from a game, console or other device can stop screen time or to some degree control what your child is doing or seeing on a screen, it cannot create this inner voice, this sense of personal responsibility, that your child most adamantly needs to be a healthy adult in the digital age.