Overview

Ninety-five percent of American kids have Internet access by age 11; the average number of texts a teenager sends each month is well over 3,000. More families report that technology makes life with children more challenging, not less, as parents today struggle with questions previous generations never faced: Is my thirteen-year-old responsible enough for a Facebook page? What will happen if I give my nine year-old a cell phone? In The Parent App, Lynn Schofield Clark provides what families have been sorely lacking: smart, sensitive, and effective strategies for coping with the dilemmas of digital and mobile media in modern life. Clark set about interviewing scores of mothers and fathers, identifying not only their various approaches, but how they differ according to family income. Parents in upper-income families encourage their children to use media to enhance their education and self-development and to avoid use that might distract them from goals of high achievement. Lower income families, in contrast, encourage the use of digital and mobile media in ways that are respectful, compliant toward parents, and family-focused. Each approach has its own benefits and drawbacks, and whatever the parenting style or economic bracket, parents experience anxiety about how to manage new technology. With the understanding of a parent of teens and the rigor of a social scientist, Clark tackles a host of issues, such as family communication, online predators, cyber bullying, sexting, gamer drop-outs, helicopter parenting, technological monitoring, the effectiveness of strict controls, and much more.The Parent App is more than an advice manual. As Clark admits, technology changes too rapidly for that. Rather, she puts parenting in context, exploring the meaning of media challenges and the consequences of our responses-for our lives as family members and as members of society.

Full Product Details

Author:   Lynn Schofield Clark (Associate Professor in Media, Film, and Journalism Studies, and Director of the Estlow International Center for Journalism and New Media, University of Denver)
Publisher:   Oxford University Press Inc
Imprint:   Oxford University Press Inc
Dimensions:   Width: 16.30cm , Height: 2.70cm , Length: 23.80cm
Weight:   0.548kg
ISBN:  

9780199899616

ISBN 10:   0199899614
Pages:   320
Publication Date:   29 November 2012
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

Preface to the Paperback Edition Preface: The Parent App and the Parent Trap Acknowledgements Part I: Digital media and family communication Ch. 1 Risk, digital media, and parenting in a digital age Ch. 2 Communication in families: expressive empowerment and respectful connectedness Ch. 3 How parents are mediating the media in middle class and in less advantaged homes Ch. 4 Media rich and time poor: The emotion work of parenting in the digital age Part II: Digital media and youth Ch. 5 Identity 2.0: Young people and digital and mobile media Ch. 6 Less advantaged teens, ethnicity, and digital and mobile media: respect, restriction, and reversal Part III: Cautionary tales Ch. 7 Cyberbullying girls, helicopter moms, and Internet predators Ch. 8 Strict parents, gamer high school dropouts, and shunned overachievers Ch. 9 Conclusion: Parenting in a digital age: The mediatization of family life and the parent app Bibliography Appendix A: Methods Appendix B: Parents, children, and the media landscape: resources Appendix C: The Family Digital Media contract

Reviews

<br> Clark's research and richly textured interviews yield tips that can help parents use social media to cope with work-family stresses in ways compatible with their particular values and needs. This thoughtful book challenges doomsday predictions about the impact of digital technology on individuals but offers disturbing evidence that the current organization and context of social media may exacerbate rather than reduce social differences. --Stephanie Coontz, author, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap<br><p><br> For any parent out there who is anxious about your child's use of social media: this book is for you. The Parent App provides important insight into the role of technology in contemporary middle class family life, combining the perspectives of parents and youth in order to highlight where there are tensions and confusion. Using a delightful mix of narrative and analysis, Clark invites parents to understand what is unfolding so that they don't feel so trapped. --Danah Boyd, Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research <br><p><br>

Author Information

Lynn Schofield Clark is Associate Professor in Media, Film, and Journalism Studies, and Director of the Estlow International Center for Journalism and New Media at the University of Denver. Her books include Religion, Media, and the Marketplace (Rutgers University Press, 2007); From Angels to Aliens (Oxford University Press, 2005), and with Stewart M. Hoover, Practicing Religion in the Age of the Media (Columbia University Press, 2002).

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