Cyber Wellness @Home

Which is your parenting type? Are you the guardian, the optimist, the watchful or the realist in the journey to cyber-wellness for your child?

Consider the boons and banes.

Get it from official sources at the Media Literacy Council (MLC).

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Technology has changed our lives. Over the years, we have stopped writing letters. Now, we write informal emails. We do not remember phone numbers. Now, we depend on our phones to remember them for us. We do not remember birth dates. Now, Facebook does that for us and we also wish people online instead of making that two-minute personal phone call.

As adults, we have experienced these changes. We know the importance of the personal touch. We can safely say we have control. Do we really?

We know how technology can be harnessed as a tool. Do we really?

Unfortunately, our children know much less unless we are there to guide them.

They live a life with technology. It is not a change. To them, it is a way of life. It is their way of life. The personal touch they know is the digital touch. They can talk to you while staring at a screen. You know it is rude. They do not. They talk to entities they have never seen before and give them their all. You know it is not wrong. They do not.

YOU can change that. BE with them MORE.

-- Limit screen time, not just the use of the internet.

-- Guide them to use technology for constructive purposes. It is a tool. It is not life.

-- Encourage physical interaction to develop interpersonal skills. Make real friends.

-- Fix time for the family. Spend time with them or they will spend it without you.

-- Limit access to sensitive sites, chat rooms and the like.

-- Put your phones and laptops down when talking to your children. Children learn from their parents. If you want children to pay attention to what you are saying, you need to build that habit by giving them complete attention when they are talking to you.

It is just social learning theory put into action. Your children are learning from you, well, some of you.

• "We are behaving in ways that certainly tell children they don't matter. They're not interesting to us. They're not as compelling as anybody, anything, any ping that may interrupt our time with them.”

Study #2. Children feel unimportant, and have to compete with smartphones for parents’ attention.

Study #4. Cellphone use interferes with healthy parenting.

Dr Lim Sun Sun (https://hass.sutd.edu.sg/faculty/sun-sun-lim/) believes that unless a family has been affected by an online- related incident such as cyber bullying, it is unlikely they will proactively seek out such courses.

Parents interviewed by The Straits Times claimed cyber-wellness talks do not serve much purpose, as they already know the basics and restrict their children's access to computers and mobile devices.

• Sales coordinator whose 13-year-old son posted his mobile phone number on the Facebook group in the spotlight recently, said she is not overly concerned. "He should be safe, I trust him."

• She also said she did not need to attend talks as her daughter, 17, has not had any problems with social media.

Through the original article is slightly dated, the question remains, can you trust the others?

What makes video gaming & internet gaming so addictive?

1. They are designed to be that way:

• Video game designers are trying to make a profit and looking for ways to get more people playing their games

• Making a game just challenging enough to keep you coming back for more

• But not so hard that the player eventually gives up.

2. There is built-in reward to stay on the games and keep coming back for more rewards.

3. Very similar in nature to other Behavioural Addiction disorder e.g. gambling addiction and substance addiction disorders.

How do you assess if your child/ward has internet addiction?

Here are some tools/questionnaires you can use:

• Kimberly Young's Internet Addiction Test

• Problematic Internet Use Questionnaire (PIUQ) developed by Demetrovics Szeredi, and Pozsa

• Compulsive Internet Use Scale (CIUS)

People need three things to flourish.

• competence—the need for mastery, progression, achievement, and growth.

• autonomy—the need for volition and freedom of control over our choice.

• strive for relatedness—the need to feel like we matter to others, and that others matter to us.

Unfortunately, when considering the state of modern childhood, many children are not getting enough or even any of these three essential elements.

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While the above-mentioned article is not strictly about what parents can do, parents should consider how they can be a part of the equation that helps their children to gain competence, autonomy and relatedness.

Otherwise, they may turn to other avenues to meet their psychological needs. From observation, we do know what happens when that takes place...

While the original article is dated, the recommendations remain golden.

1. Play a video game with your child.

• We know we should/can only criticise if we know what is happening. Otherwise, our words will not be taken seriously. After all, the unspoken thought is 'You don't understand what this is, so you should not comment'.

2. For one week, keep a log of the time spent playing video games.

• Logical comprehension comes with age. Young children tend to see more than they reason.

3. Show them what that amount of time represents in other activities.

• Show them what they are losing out

4. Arrange active indoor or outdoor activities for your children and their friends.

• For most children, companionship is important. After all, modern day gaming is about playing with others, which is a psychological need.

5. Start a long-term project of your child's choosing.

• It may just be cooler than starting a small screen.

6. Acknowledge your child’s efforts in offline pursuits.

7. Have family meals together.

• A “Family Dinner Experiment” conducted by Oprah Winfrey in 1993 challenged five families to eat dinner together every night for a month for at least a half an hour. At first the families found it difficult but by the end of the study they wanted to continue eating dinner together. The biggest surprise for the parents was “how much their children treasured the dependable time with their parents at the table.”