If you haven’t seen the video about the father who shot his child’s laptop after she posted an ungrateful, obnoxious posting on Facebook, it’s worth a look.  As a parent of a teenage daughter who can be rude and selfish, I can relate.  Yet as a person who studies developmental psychology, I know that adolescents often are rude and selfish, and some of this behavior may be beyond their control.  In addition, authoritarian parenting, heavy with rules, strictness, low tolerance and little warmth, is associated with negative outcomes for children.  And it’s pretty clear this dad has a heavy hand.  Moreover, I personally don’t think guns are ever a solution to a problem.  I mean, what is the dad modeling (modeling is one of the most influential ways that people learn due to mirror neurons in all of our brains)?  Get angry and use guns to solve your problem?

But it does show very clearly, one of the problems with allowing children access to these tools.  This girl was acting out against her parent’s rules.  Very normal.  She said something rude about one of their parent’s friends.  Again normal.  But in the past this was contained to inside the home or within a small group of school friends.  In the 21st century?  She chose to post it on Facebook.  What was she thinking?  It seems that her father may have even been a Facebook friend.  Even if he wasn’t, the teenager’s difficulty to connect actions with consequences combined with increased risk taking behavior, made her not think that without a doubt her father would see the post.  And moreover, that the father’s friend would see the post and be hurt by being called a housecleaner.

The most recent Pew report on social networking sites found that most adults witnessed kind behavior on the sites, but the less heralded number is that 49% witnessed mean behavior – and the group surveyed were adults!  That is an astonishingly high number.  A former study on teens and social networking sites reflected a higher number to witness mean behavior — 88%. Think about it — in your day-to-day, face to face daily life how much mean and cruel behavior do you witness?  I would venture to say it is much less than 49%.

These sites give children (and in fact all of us) tools to act out, and if they have poor self-control, to act emotionally.  The teen who acted out on Facebook suffered some pretty serious consequences.  But then her father notched it up a level when he reacted.  His original YouTube video was removed – perhaps he is reconsidering his actions and took it down?  But now it’s too late – his video has been reposted by others and in many many places and will live on.

Despite recent concerns of parents that homework serves little purpose and can be too stressful for children (i.e. see post on the film RACE TO NOWHERE), most research finds that self regulation skills and homework activities are related.  Hundreds of studies in a variety of contexts, not only in the classroom, but also in healthcare and other arenas, found similar positive outcomes for better self-regulated learners (Duckworth et al, 2009).   A good self regulator will pay attention to task, persist when it becomes difficult, demonstrate flexibility, be motivated and confident that additional effort will lead to positive outcomes.  Sounds pretty good right, even for adults!

Teachers know homework contributes to self-regulation skills, and that is why even a little homework at a young age can be helpful.  As a parent, I invested a lot of time in making sure my young children did their homework first thing, at the kitchen table when they came home from school, beginning in kindergarten when the academic value of the work was questionable.  And today, when they come home from school and are motivated to do their homework without my staying on top of them every minute, I am extremely grateful that I put in the time when they were younger. Now the stakes are higher, and they SELF-regulate.  Much better than MOMMY-regulate.

The activities that students conduct during homework such as motivating themselves, setting goals, and inhibiting distractions are all components of self-regulation.  As such, teaching effective homework practices may be a relatively simple means of developing self-regulation.  Investing greater effort in homework is also associated with higher achievement with effect sizes ranging from .39 to .97.   In studies with middle school children, students with better skills in SRL while completing homework ahieved higer academic performance (Zimmerman, 2008).

And really… do any of you want to be sitting in your child’s dorm room when they go to college telling them to get back to work?

A version of this article, co-authored with Dr Adi Jaffe, first appeared in Psychology Today online.

1 in 3 people consider the Internet to be as important as air, water, food and shelter. Given how intensely people feel about this technology, is it any wonder that some psychologists are convinced that Internet addiction is a real pathology?  True, claiming that people are as addicted to the Internet as they are to air, food, or water is obviously a non-starter; it’s pretty clear that the actual role of technology is far less compulsory in terms of human survival.

But does this kind of dependence, compulsory or otherwise, qualify as an addiction? 

continue reading "Internet addiction — Societal Problem?"

Listening to NPR on the way home from dropping my kids off at carpool, I heard an advertisement from CHLA.org.  It was a PSA, and it started with the words “Is texting bad for your children?”  The smooth toned announcer then informed us that “Unfortunately it is,” and went on to tell the listeners why — lack of sleep and more.   Even on NPR, the data that well meaning advertisers report is misused and can consequently mislead parents.  Let me explain why.
continue reading "Is texting bad for my children?"

This guest post was written by Keely Muscatel, a very talented doctoral candidate in social psychology at UCLA and was first posted on Psychology in Action.

Turn on the TV or open a magazine these days, and chances are your eyes will be filled with images of “beauty”: ultra-thin models, men with bulging biceps and washboard abs, celebrities with perfect complexions and flawless figures. In some cases, even leaving the house to drive down a billboard-laden street can cause you to arrive at work or school with heightened body image concerns. What sort of psychological toll is the media’s depiction of beauty taking on us, and what can we do to combat it?

continue reading "Can’t Get No (Body) Satisfaction: Media Effects on Body Image"