New York Times blog discussion about "Wired Kids, Negligent Parents?"

My creative 10-year old son was asked by his language arts teacher to write a paragraph about an animal in its natural habitat. He decided to write about "tweens" and "screenagers" in their natural habitat of school. My sons (10 and 14) and I talk about the phenomenon of "screenagers" when we talk about reasonable amounts of "screen time" and the amount of time their friends spend on their screens. This blog discussion can be found at http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/28/wired-kids-negligent-parents/?emc=eta1
I agreed with 2 pieces of advice for parents from Linda Guernsey who wrote,

"Experiencing the media together would a good first step. The research on “co-viewing” — on the positive impact that comes from parents watching media with their children and talking about it — is persuasive. Schools and community groups need to wake up too and explore how these media interactions could be turned into more active learning experiences that extend to real, face-to-face life.

And yes, we will still need to set boundaries. I liked the example, given at the Kaiser Family Foundation forum last week, of middle-school parents banding together to impose a texting “curfew” on weeknights."

Recently, I had dinner with a group of friends to discuss our teenaged kids (who are all friends) and to share ideas about how to pick our battles and work together to enforce some common rules, including curfews on texting on school nights. This discussion helped us to create an agreement with our "screenager", who turns off and gives us his phone and laptop at 10pm on weeknights.
I feel like I should wear a black and white referee shirt, since I often find myself in the role of policing parental limits on daily screen time. It would be more positive for me and my husband to find more opportunities for "co-viewing" when my sons are allowed screen time.