Guest Katey McPherson discusses being a responsible digital citizen, the impacts of social media on social-emotional health, and tips on how to promote healthy behaviors online.
Katey brings experience in school leadership, prevention, and organizational change with 25 years as a secondary school teacher, guidance counselor, and K-12 school administrator.
Katey currently serves as a Regional Sales Manager for Bark For Schools, an artificial intelligence app that protects over 5 million children nationwide, and is a national public speaker on youth mental health and suicide prevention.
During the podcast, Katey discusses additional resources which can be found here: www.kateymcpherson.com/resources.
Nicole Rodriguez: Welcome to Parenting Future-Focused Kids. Today we are going to talk about being a responsible digital citizen, the impacts of social media on social and emotional health, and tips on how to promote healthy behaviors online. We would like to welcome our guest, Katie McPherson, to the podcast.
Katie brings experience in school leadership, prevention, and organizational change, with 25 years as a secondary school teacher, guidance counselor and K-12 school administrator. Katie currently serves as a regional sales manager for Bark for Schools, an artificial intelligence app that protects over 5 million children nationwide and is a national public speaker on youth mental health and suicide prevention.
Katie also serves as the town of Gilbert, Arizona, One Gilbert Youth Mental Health Task Force lead chair. In her spare time, she is also the mother of four tween and teen daughters ages 12, 12, 14 and 15. So today we'd like to welcome Katie McPherson to the podcast.
Thank you so much for calling in today. We're so excited to have you here and talk about how to be a responsible digital citizen.
Katie McPherson: Thanks so much for having me.
NR: Yeah, so let's just jump right into it. What does it mean to be a responsible digital citizen?
KM: Well, I think, you know, there are five pillars of digital wellness. So when we talk about digital citizenship, it's really being competent in internet safety and digital wellness and really learning as a young child, as you transition to middle and high school into cultivating a digital footprint and as well as being really well-versed in security and privacy and safety.
NR: I think those are great things to keep in mind. Obviously, we're approaching, you know, winter break parents, families might be listening to this over winter break, and we know that our students really spend a lot of time on social media, right? And is there a healthy amount of time to to spend on social media and bringing in those aspects that you just listed? What should you know, families and students be keeping in mind when they go online?
KM: I think most importantly, the research lends itself to kind of a sweet spot, and I put you know, Digital Wellness into two buckets: digital candy and digital, vegetables, so all of the things that school districts are sending home as far as academics would be considered digital vegetables.
So redeeming content, things that are moving your life forward. And then we have digital candy, which is social media and video gaming. And maybe some of that, you know, texting that goes on late at night. So researchers and the American Academy of Pediatrics really looks at no more than two hours of digital candy per day.
So most American students are probably getting more than two hours if we're really honest, and most adults are probably getting more than two hours as well. So when we look at recommending, you know, where to balance that, I would say no more than two hours per day.
If you can keep it at one hour, that would be fabulous.
NR: I think that's a great recommendation. And you mentioned adults as well, just something that came to mind: what do parents need to keep in mind in terms of their own device use at home and how that might influence that digital candy time for their students and how they use social media or the internet throughout the day?
KM: Well, I think it's important to look at, you know, when, I got a lot of questions about when to give the first phone and all of that and a lot of seventh grade parents of seventh grade girls call and say, you know, she won't put her phone down.
She keeps taking all these selfies, and I have to kind of dial them back and talk to them about like, what are we modeling at home like from out of the womb until it's twelve years old, all she has been seeing is you taking photos of her every move.
And so now she has her own device and the ability to do that too. So they're kind of playing Monkey See, Monkey Do. So when we look at how a student interacts online, we look at the adults and how they're modeling their technology.
And obviously parents are really busy. Most of us have a laptop, an iPad, and a phone, if not more than one phone for work and for personal. And so, you know, kids are really watching our every move. And so if you want to be a good mentor, we we have to put our phones down to you, whether it's at the dinner table while driving, at night on your nightstand, scrolling in the middle of the night. I mean, they're really looking at all of those things as those things happen with their parents. So I think, you know, really getting some clarity over this holiday break about how do we want to lead into 2022 with us modeling maybe some better behaviors for ourselves as well.
NR: Right. I think all of us can be, you know, challenge ourselves to kind of put down technology. Every now and again, like you said, we all have multiple phones sometimes and laptops, and it's very easy to kind of, I don't know, get immersed in that, right, every day.
KM: So it's important that we as adults keep that in mind as we're modeling that behavior for our students and our children at home.