My friend, Amy, offered me a ticket to “Screenagers,” a documentary about the ever-increasing amount of free time our kids devote to staring at electronics — iPads, iPhones, tablets, computers — for their social connections, gossiping and gaming.
Although my youngest is not even a tween, I started to wonder if her growing obsession with a game called “Animal Jam” was benign. What are these “spikes” and “rares,” and why does it put such a bounce in her step when she successfully bargains for one?
The event was put on by the Parent Engagement Network, and presented to a packed auditorium at Platt Middle School in Boulder last week. So many families came, they had to turn them away at the door.
I shouldn’t be surprised. I know a lot of brilliant kids who fail to moderate their screen time, and wonderful overloaded parents (like us) who love the quiet when our kids are on their electronic pacifiers. Besides, life online is monumentally more predictable, controllable and fun than the social chaos of school and real life.
The same can be said for adults avoiding reality for the Xbox. Full disclosure, Amy and I meandered into the post-film workshop, Violent Gaming, to wife-diagnose our husbands for too much time spent killing aliens in their man caves. As my friend Suzanne says, “Well, at least we know where they are.”
The film was excellent, in that it offers solutions, such as creating a time usage contract with your child’s input, and suggestions, such as taking away all electronics at least one hour before bedtime (lit screens poorly affect sleep).
But Amy and I left wondering how to fill the gap and reverse the damage with something that promotes the opposite of social isolation — something that connects our screenagers to real friends and mentors with faces, teaches them creative and practical skills and offers them an empowering place within their larger community.
Serendipitously, the following night, I attended a Colorado Kids reporting workshop with my daughter at the Denver Post offices downtown. Colorado Kids is an online publication that is written, reported and photographed by kids under 14. While there are a lot of opportunities for kids over 14 to be community journalists, there really aren’t any for the younger ones, says Dana Plewka, who heads education and outreach for the Post, Boulder Daily Camera, Longmont Times-Call and Loveland Reporter-Herald.
“Being a reporter teaches kids to get out there, shake someone’s hand, look them in the eye,” Plewka says. “We’ve had many Colorado Kids get full scholarships to college like Colorado State University, and that’s because they exude confidence in the interview.”
Sadly, in this economic climate Colorado Kids is at risk of shutting down, Plewka tells us. With only two staffers, it’s tough to get the word out they exist. And they need reporters beyond the excellent ones in the stable. Plewka, who is Colorado Kids executive editor, will even come to your school to do a presentation if asked.
I can’t say enough good things about this incredible opportunity. Colorado Kids reporters are treated to their own veteran newspaper editor, Mike Peterson, who can hone their skills with personal editing and weekly tips. He welcomes book and movie reviews, personal profiles (one teen reporter just interviewed Buzz Aldrin), feature and news articles. Reporters take their own photographs.
“Go out on a hike in Buena Vista, and take some photographs of mountain goats. Then tell me all about the hike,” he tells my daughter. “We really like those stories.”
My fledgling Edward R. Murrow is passionate about animals. She wrote her first two articles on Lafayette’s Luvin’ Arms Sanctuary and the Colorado House Rabbit Society. I relish reading her fresh voice and stumbling upon the choice quotes she puts into her stories, such as the rabbit who was raised by ducks and learned how to quack.
Colorado Kids is a collection of diverse voices of kids from across the state, who come from eclectic backgrounds of ethnicity, religion and culture. It’s a unique resource we should bolster before it’s too late and it folds, much like so many newspapers across the country. I’d also like to see the Post and its sister papers link to Colorado Kids from their websites every day.
For more information on becoming a Colorado Kids reporter, contact Dana Plewka, Youth Content Editor, Denver Post Educational Services, 303-954-3974, dplewka@denverpost.com or Colorado Kids Editor Mike Peterson coloradokidseditor@gmail.com
Colorado Kids is available each Tuesday in the e-edition of the Denver Post and is produced by the Educational Services Program. For more information about CK and the many other educational services available to educators and kids, visit ColoradoNIE.com
Email: flyingburros@gmail.com
Our editors found this article on this site using Google and regenerated it for our readers.