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Our Kids and Technology

7 hours and 38 minutes A DAY!

April 27, 2016

Right now, as you are reading this, children across the globe are connected…connected with technology. It may be watching a morning television show, a movie on a tablet, playing a video game on a smartphone, sending a text to a friend, sending a picture through Snapchat, and the list can go on and on. 

According to a Kaiser Family Foundation study, kids spend an average of 7 hours, 38 minutes a day connected to some type of electronic device. The big worry for parents is that they don’t often know what their child is doing on their phone, online, or in the real world — and their kids aren’t always forthcoming with what’s going on in their lives.

I completely connect and agree with Dr. Barbara Greenberg when she states ,  “You have to monitor now. It’s not so you can read it all day long—you check in now and then—it’s a parental responsibility. It’s an area of their life that we have to supervise like we do in other areas. We have to make sure they’re safe.”

I can’t imagine what life is like for you mom and dads out there with teenagers who are full throttle on social media. My husband and I are just trying to set limits and boundaries on the amount of time our kiddos are connected.  Grace, our daughter will sometimes browse my Facebook news feed and find something she doesn’t quite understand. She is always good about asking us, but I know we need to monitor what she sees, but more importantly be ready to explain. We know as parents protecting our kids is not sheltering them from what the world says is right and acceptable, but letting our kids know what our Christian faith says is the biblical way to believe and act. I’m not saying it is easy, but educating our children about social media and technology is so important.