Parenting for the Digital Generation: A Guide to Digital Education and the Online Environment

by Jon M. Garon

Overview

Parenting for the Digital Generation provides a practical handbook for parents, grandparents, teachers, and counselors who want to understand both the opportunities and the threats that exist for the generation of digital natives who are more familiar with a smartphone than they are with a paper book. This book provides straightforward, jargon-free information regarding the online environment and the experience in which children and young adults engage both inside and outside the classroom.

The digital environment creates many challenges, some of which are largely the same as parents faced before the Internet, but others which are entirely new. Many children struggle to connect, and they underperform in the absence of the social and emotional support of a healthy learning environment. Parents must also help their children navigate a complex and occasionally dangerous online world.

This book provides a step-by-step guide for parents seeking to raise happy, mature, creative, and well-adjusted children. The guide provides clear explanations of the keys to navigating as a parent in the online environment while providing practical strategies that do not look for dangers where there are only remote threats.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781475861952
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	02/15/2022
Pages:	298
Product dimensions:	6.41(w) x 9.37(h) x 1.12(d)

About the Author

Jon M. Garon is professor of law and past dean at Nova Southeastern University Shepard Broad College of Law, where he serves as the director of the Intellectual Property, Cybersecurity, and Technology Law Program.

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction

1. Creating a Healthy Digital Family

2. Managing Online Engagement

3. Information and Digital Literacy

4. Online Education Fundamentals

5. How to be an Engaged Parent in Online and Blended Education

6. Equity and Equality for Online and Blended Education

7. Beyond High School – the Professional Online Presence

8. Copyright, Creativity, and the Teen Artist

9. Mature and Explicit Content

10. Cyberstalking and Online Harassment

11. Radicalization

12. The Dark Web

13. My Child the Hacker

14. Everyday Safety Online: Safe Shopping, Consumer Privacy, and Government’s Rights to Search

15. Protecting against Identity Theft and Fraud: A Nontechnical Introduction to Cybersecurity for the Family

Conclusion: Building Balance Online and Offline

Appendices

List of Acronyms

Bibliography

About the Author

Editorial Reviews

12/06/2021

“Unconditional love, support, structure, and stability” aren’t the focus of the digital era, suggests law professor Garon in this savvy, nuanced take on parenting an online generation. To help parents harness the power of the web as part of a healthy environment for children, the author focuses on the need for 21st-century “information literacy, digital literacy, privacy literacy, and cultural competency” for both kids and adults. He covers concerns with seriousness but never fearmongering, touching on online connections (a great potential way for children, particularly LGBTQ kids, to find supportive communities), pornography (child pornography is prosecutable even when the material is created by teens and only shared with peers), and the potential for political radicalization or the possibility that an adolescent could become a malicious hacker. He outlines security and privacy practices and offers e-commerce safety tips, and his legal background comes through in concise explanations of online privacy protections and educational accessibility law. Though the writing tends to be stiff, Garon’s guidance is nonetheless easy to understand, even for those without a technical background. Parents skeptical about the web would do well to pick this up. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

As a parent of a twelve-year old, I have often had questions and fears about my child's access to digital media. Like most parents, I have turned to the Internet for answers, but have been frustrated by the multitude of contradictory opinions that lack credibility or research. As a psychologist and academic, I know there are more reliable and trustworthy sources. Jon Garon's book is the resource I have been looking for. Both comprehensive and readable, Parenting for the Digital Generation is an engaging read from cover to cover and a valuable reference book for my shelf. Every parent should have a copy.

Kurt A. Boniecki

Today children and schools are often more adept at understanding and using technology than parents, leaving them confused and without information or skills. This book gives parents a clear and comprehensive framework so they can “get their head in the game.” Parenting for the Digital Generation teaches terminology, relevant laws and rules, dangers, and safeguards. It provides understandable and practical strategies for raising healthy children based on their developmental age. I’ve never seen anything else that puts all the pieces together.

Karen Grosby

This book is a "must read" for all parents who worry about how to support their children during this time of increased digital expectations. As a child psychologist and parent myself, this book offers something new to the field of parenting in the digital age. Parenting for the Digital Generation provides current life examples, including cyberbullying, mental health, deepfakes and disinformation, and offers strategies to help our children understand how to use technology in a safe and useful way, while ensuring they are aware of the negative aspects of the internet.

Ellie Covin

At Last! The guidelines parents and teachers having been waiting for. And, it’s all in one organized, straightforward, book. Technology can be such a large, difficult expanse of terms and capabilities that change rapidly. Jon Garon’s book, Parenting for the Digital Generation will give both parents and teachers the information needed to confidently provide support and instruction for any child’s education.

Kimberly Durham

Jon Garon's book is a must-read for every parent, grandparent, teacher, and caregiver concerned about how children and teenagers are using and either benefitting from or being consumed by digital content. The sections on videogames and data-gathering via surveillance are especially illuminating for those of us who hope to let our kids use the best of digital content (as we needed it so much over the past 18 months) and avoid what we hope they won't use.

Sarah Jane Hughes

An impressive compendium of the latest evidence on how to think about the use of technology with children! Given the fast-moving nature of technology, the book also presents some strong principles to help parents think about how to continue to get the vast benefits from technology while limiting the downsides.

Michael B. Horn

Parenting for the Digital Generation should be required reading for every parent, educator, and young adult. This comprehensive manual is one of the best organized guides in print today. Mr. Garon provides concrete instructions and recommendations for parents and anyone who wants to maintain a balanced digital life. The legal and ethical standards provided are timely and relevant as our society continues to be more reliant on all forms of technology.

William J. Kopas

As a parent, lawyer and educator, Professor Jon Garon brings his unique insights on the effect of today’s technology on families and the legal/social structures that both protect and threaten family cohesiveness. This book combines deep legal and technical knowledge with practical insight. Here lies an understanding of the social and technological waves buffeting children today, with the tools and resources to calm the waters.

Ted Claypoole

As a child psychologist and a mom, I know most parents have concerns about how to parent in this quickly-changing, fast-paced, digital world. This book provides families with a strong knowledge base for understanding the basics of the digital world, offers examples of the benefits of technology, discusses the concerns, and provides an understandable framework for determining how to maintain balance within the family. The easy-to-read charts that describe developmental stages in relation to media use will become a favorite resource page as I continue to support families in their goals of finding the strengths in the digital world that will help foster their children’s development while maintaining age-appropriate and realistic limits. This book is a must read for all parents.

Sandra Sondell

I am thrilled to see a publication of a practical, encyclopedia-like, easy to read, follow and understand guide/handbook for all. It is a most needed guide for parents, teachers, and counselors, especially during this digital informational age. The Parenting for the Digital Generation is comprehensive and packed with one-stop shopping resources for all stakeholders. The book's unique features are the solutions provided for parents struggling to keep their children safe, happy, and engaging before the internet and during the upsurge of digital usage. The book also covered the legal aspect for all stakeholders. I was pleasantly surprised by the many options an educator and stakeholder have both inside and outside the classroom to help keep our children safe, happy and engage while using the internet.

Hui Fang Su