Monitoring Teens' Media Intake Poses Challenges

MONITORING TEENS' MEDIA INTAKE POSES CHALLENGES
[SOURCE: National Public Radio, AUTHOR: Neda Ulaby]
If you go to online spaces popular with teenagers, you'll find plenty of smart, funny, charming material. But you'll probably also find things that would make the most liberal parents cringe. It's easy for teens and pre-teens to access hardcore images of sex and violence that would have been hard for adults to find 20 years ago and the ability to disguise one's identity online can make it harder for parents to determine exactly what their children are doing. If experts agree on one thing, it's that most parents are clueless about the media lives of their children. It can be tricky for parents to define what is appropriate, especially when mainstream culture has become so casually risque. Susannah Stern, who teaches communications at the University of San Diego, notes that kids have "learned very well from adults what we value and what gets people to pay attention."
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