You throw a birthday party for your nine-year-old daughter,
with a magician and a balloon-animal twister.
All the girls show up, but all they want to do is text and play on their
cell phones. You…
b. Are appalled!
Who buys their nine-year-old a cell phone?
c. Get creative and have them play “hot potato”
with their cell phones.
d. Take away their cell phones and force them
to be social and have fun. This is a
birthday party, right?
A few years ago, I found the pervasiveness of young kids toting
cell phones to be both surprising and alarming.
So much so, that I included this question in my Cosmo-like unscientific quiz
on parenting and living in the suburbs and titled it
“Conundrums in Absurdia.”
Fast-forward a few years to when my daughter was 11. She was
invited to a Halloween party that promised a toilet-paper-wrapped mummy contest,
and pin-the-wings on the bat. Instead,
the 30 some-odd party girls divided up into cliques and collected in corners
around the house gazing intently at their slide-texting cell phones. My cell-phone-less daughter came home sad
and bewildered…so much for Halloween and so much for parental party
involvement.
Waiting until she was 13 to buy her a cell phone was a
decision my husband and I thought reasonable. But she soon found herself left
out of private jokes, spontaneous ice skating at the local rink and the latest
on who was “dating” whom.
She was left
out and we were to blame. Or maybe we were to thank?
Social pressure, particularly for a tween/teenager, is difficult
and tricky. Although my husband and I
did not want to cave to the mounting pressure, we ultimately agreed to look
into a “starter” cell phone. But, was there a cell phone version of training
wheels? We shopped around and found a
basic text-enable phone with a wireless plan that offered “parental limits,” allowing
the input of your child’s top 10 contacts – mom, dad, grandparents, siblings – and
a even room for a few “besties.” That
Chanukah we surprised our daughter with her very own cell phone. Her reaction
was to let out a joyful scream, fall off the sofa, and then onto the floor in
ecstasy.
Today, my daughter is 15, and like her peers she sports a $500
iPhone. The iPhone is her constant
companion, her umbilical cord, feeding her the necessary socialization to
survive in our always on, short-take, selfie-loving society.
How do you raise a
digital daughter?
It's a new conundrum we are all facing together. Unlike boys, girls are so much more socially aware
of outside influences. Girls tend to be
more social, more connected and they care more about fitting in. That’s why
they read teen and fashion magazines and blogs. That’s why their smartphones
never leave their sides. And that’s why they text-constantly, are obsessed with
Instagram and Facebook “likes,” take hundreds of photos, and have group chats
with their friends – a.k.a. online cliques.
The rise of social media makes me sentimental for the good
old days of being yelled at by our parents to get off our always-tangled corded
telephone.
Remember
The Brady Bunch episode when
a huge phone bill prompts Mike to have a pay telephone installed to
teach the kids a lesson in financial responsibility? What do they say? The more things change, the more they stay
the same?
“She’s at a bar on
Manhattan’s Upper East Side, but she seems oblivious to the boys and the
music. Instead of engaging with those
around her, she’s scrolling through text messages on her phone, from friends at
other parties across town. She needs to know if the event she is at is the
event to be at, or whether something better is happening at that very moment,
somewhere else.”
This is FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) at its best – and
worst. And increasingly, we are all guilty. Rushkoff calls this the new “now.” We all
need to step back and help each other and our daughters wisely navigate through
this new reality. Our daughters may be
digital natives, but they still need our guidance and our perspective.
As a 25-plus-year communications professional, I have thrilled
at riding the crashing waves of Internet culture. I have been fortunate to be part of seminal technology
milestones that have impacted consumers and how we communicate: AT&T’s
launch of the first video phone, IBM’s launch of the Internet, Sierra Online’s launch
of an online gaming network, id Software’s QUAKE, the multi-player gaming
phenomenon and House Party’s experience-driven social networking platform. But it
wasn’t until I had my own kids that I recognized the profound changes these new
technologies are having on our digital natives.
Kids today are growing up EVEN FASTER - at Internet speed and nobody gave us a guidebook.
There is no doubt that our new communications tools and the
social media channels that ride on their backs are influencing the way we all
socialize and communicate – girls and boys alike. But for our girls, our daughters who are
growing up in a still male-dominated society, and who are often more harshly
judged, it is even more profound and impactful.
We need to empower our girls to find their own authentic
voice and not rely on trendy Internet slang (LOL!) or emojis J to make their feelings
known; to pick up their bowed heads from that hypnotic screen and be
comfortable in their own skins; to learn how to speak articulately and with
confidence; to stop posing like their favorite celebrity icon; to look a person
in the eye; to shake a hand and make a physical connection.
Mostly, we need to teach them to be present in the new “now”
and enjoy each precious moment.
As for the answer to the upfront multiple-choice question, I
would go with d.
