So China has actually determined that internet addiction is a clinical disorder that must be dealt with, comparing it to gambling and alcoholism.  Refering to 4 million teens there that spend  more than six hours a day on the internet, the misiter of health cites the following symptoms: “yearning to get back online, mental or physical distress, irritation and difficulty concentrating or sleeping.”.  This is exactly why we need to educate kids and parents early, BEFORE they develop this habit of addiction!

Yikes - did you see the report last night on CNN about internet addicition?  It is estimated that 30 million people in the United States are addicted to the internet!  According to the report the main addictions are cybersex, online affairs and gambling.  If adults that weren’t even raised with internet access are addicts, what is going to happen to the next generation of adults that had a computer or two in every household and high speed internet 24/7?  We have got to do something for the adults of the future by teaching the kids of today how to use and not abuse the internet!  Priority Patrol is just the tool to do that - to teach moderation!  Check out the article at:http://caffertyfile.blogs.cnn.com/category/internet/

Oh my gosh … yet another reason to teach our kids to balance their activities … now the predators are finding kids through the hand held video games, even when the kids are on school grounds or at home! I couldn’t believe this segment I saw on the Today Show on July 17, 2008. Matt Lauer introduced Natalie Morales who was interviewing Parry Aftab, a cyber crimes specialist from New Jersey and founder of WiredSafety and the Tween Angel Network. Matt introduced the piece by telling the audience “Authorities tell us that many of today’s gaming devices as well as some popular internet games potentially could allow predators to contact your kids.” Then the conversation ensued between Natalie Morales, Parry Aftab and a computer crimes detective that went like this: Read the rest of this entry »

More in the news about obesity and our couch potato generation!!  The National Institute of Health released a study on July 17, 2008 indicating that teenagers aren’t’ as active as they need to be which raises concern about their long term health.  This is exactly why we need to teach our kids balance as children so that they create the habit of healthy living that will stay with them throughout their lives!  Dr. Philip Nader with UCSD  said “people don’t recognize this as the crisis that it is” and sent on to say he was “surprised by how dramatic the decline (in activity) was and cited schools dropping recess and gym class and kids increasing use of video games and computers as possible reasons.”  Dr. James Griffen with the NIH agreed that screen time exacerbates this problem - “all of the types of things that take children for outside and put them on a couch or in front of the computer”.  Check out the whole study on Yahoo:  http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080716/ap_on_he_me/med_couch_potato_kids

Wow, did you see Time Magazine’s  special health issue published June 23, 2008  entitled “Our SuperSuper-sized Kids”?  It was a magazine full of information about the childhood obesity epidemic in our country.  David Bjerklie wrote an amazing article about “getting our kids moving” and his number 1 suggestion was that parents “PULL THE PLUG”.  He referred to the use of TV, video games and the internet at a “stranglehold that can seem unbreakable” and he suggested that parents “set limits”!  This is exactly what Priority Patrol can help families accomplish!!!  Check out the entire article at: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1813963,00.html

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no more than one to two hours of quality TV and videos a day for older children and no screen time for children under the age of 2.” It seems like parents around the country are scratching their heads and wondering how to make this happen.  Judy Arnall of Professional Parenting in Canada wrote a great article that was published in my local parenting magazine (Neapolitan Family) this past month (June 2008).  It is titled “Top 10 Tips to Limit Your Child’s Screen Time without Scream Time” in which she suggests that parents need to model a balanced life which should include these seven areas:  social time, physical activity, mental exercise, spiritual time, family time, financial time and hobby time.   Those are the very same habits that Priority Patrol helps develop!  Read the whole article in NJ Family.

The idea of the Priority Patrol came to me when we lived in a house that had two stories. My girls would come home from school and go to the playroom which was upstairs and I would find myself yelling up to them such things as “Are you doing your homework?” and “Don’t turn on the TV or computer until your room is clean!”. I know that over time my words were probably sounding like the teacher in the Charlie Brown shows … WAWA, WAWA, WAWA, and I didn’t like feeling like I was nagging all the time. I wondered to myself, “How can I help them create the habit of knowing what to do first? How can I help them know instinctually what needs to be done, and in what order, without having to be the nag?” I knew this was a life skill that doesn’t come naturally or innately to anyone, yet it is also a life skill that they would need in order to be successful in school, college, career and beyond. Then it hit me … they needed a visual reminder, kind of like the old string around the finger trick of days gone by, and that’s when Priority Patrol was born.

In addition to helping folks prioritize, Priority Patrol does have a safety feature. Simply, the less time one spends ON the internet, the less opportunity he/she has to find trouble on the internet. My kids spend about a half an hour a day on the net. They do their homework, check their messages, look up some info they need and that’s about it. I take great comfort in knowing that they are not on the internet long enough to really find trouble. Basically, my child who spends thirty minutes on the internet a day, is eight times less likely to get into trouble on the net than another child who spends four hours on line per day. So the bottom line is … less opportunity for cyber trouble AND learning to prioritize at the same time. It’s a “win-win” all the way around!!

Wow! When I developed Priority Patrol it was in an effort to train my children how to prioritize their time. Now, just a couple of years later I am grateful for Priority Patrol because I believe it has kept them healthy and out of harms way on the internet. While I wanted to eliminate the nagging I had to do to get my kids to do what needed to be done, it turns out that I have also kept them away from viewing such things as violence and pornography, and perhaps even losing money to on line poker. These are all the issue parents may have to deal with due to the amount of screen time their kids get.