Educating Parents to Relieve Fears

We have talked quite a bit about how we as librarians can and should help young people to be media literate and media safe. What should our role be? Censor? Guide? Facilitator? Educator? Which are the most important things to teach? What exactly do children and young adults most need to be protected against? There are no clear and easy answers to these questions, but for a general approach, I agree with Chanell (April 14, Always use protection?!) and Katie (April 14, Fear and the Internet) that it is important to consider the potential benefits of media engagement as well as the potential risks, and to not let our fears so overwhelm us that we throw out the baby with the bath water, so to speak, and deny our young people the myriad opportunities for creation, communication and connection available through digital technologies and the Internet.

One way to work towards achieving this balance between safety and encouragement, I think, may be to widen the focus of our efforts a little to include parents as well as young people. As Ruth pointed out, “teens and their parents may be growing farther apart, giving new meaning to the term ‘digital divide’. Parents often do not understand or monitor the online behavior of their children, or underestimate what their children are doing.” (April 14, Should we be concerned?) I think that parents not understanding the technologies their children are using is what creates a great deal of the fear surrounding young peoples’ use of digital and internet technologies.. Ignorance is the most fertile breeding ground for fear that there is. Perhaps in addition to trying to make judgments about how to guide, educate and protect young people ourselves, we should also be striving to empower parents to make those decisions by educating them and giving them the tools they need to understand the practices their children are engaging in.

I noticed that when we broke in to small groups to design programs, at least two, if not all three, groups chose to design programs aimed at adults. In the “real world”, as well, many libraries offer programs intended for parents about topics such as social networking, blogging and texting. This approach is not much different from the advice concerning TV and movies that it seems like I have been hearing for years: you don’t need to forbid your child to watch TV or movies—you need to watch with them and talk with them about what they see. Similarly, being on Facebook and navigating its privacy settings or reading some blogs and noticing how the discourse is furthered or hindered by the nature of the comments will make it easier for parents to teach their children about these topics.

The bottom line is that in most cases, parents have far more influence over their children’s attitudes and activities than teachers or librarians. If they can understand what their children are doing and converse knowledgeably with them about the various digital and online practices they are involved with, they will have a much better chance of helping to keep their children safe, more opportunities to help their children take full advantage of the many benefits of being media literate, and more opportunities to talk with their children about how their beliefs and values apply to these activities.

I am not saying, of course, that we should offer education and guidance to parents instead of offering the same to children and young people. Children can never have too many opportunities to learn. But I do think that educating parents may be just as important as educating children. Educating parents serves two purposes: it creates another resource for children to turn to for guidance and it lessens the fears that parents may have, which in turn will make it easier for them to encourage and support their children’s positive engagement with various digital and internet technologies.