Maybe you overreact to children’s online usage. Or you under-react! Sometimes, it’s hard to know! But you can guide kids to making informed and responsible choices online – choices that will have a lasting impact on their emotional well-being. Call Hope Rising (405-676-4140).
Who would have guessed 20 years ago that the skills necessary for online gaming would prove to match those needed for drone pilots? In fact, video gamers are much better than general aviation pilots as UAV operators, according to studies!
In other words, the time spent on the Internet by kids is not in itself bad - it's about how that time is used. And those studies hardly justify the amount of time some kids - who won't likely become pilots - devote to gaming!
Telling kids to stop doing something has never worked, but steering, guiding, and being with them - meaningfully - does.
Hope Rising has devoted new lesson plans to the online well-being of schoolchildren in grades 6-8 as part of its revised 2022/2023 ‘My Best Me’ SEL curriculum. The course of study, available for kids from elementary school through the 12th grade, aims to fortify children’s character development and increase their self-confidence - giving them the best possible toolkit to forge their own successful path in life and within their communities.
Check them out at https://hoperisingsel.com
One aim of Hope Rising’s updated curriculum is to support students in making healthy lifestyle choices - and to appreciate the effects of their choices on their health and well-being. Nowhere is this more immediately and readily apparent than online: children in middle school or those in the 10-13 age range will soon be at their most vulnerable to poor online choices that can prove detrimental to their sense of identity and overall personal development.
It is estimated that children aged eight to ten spend an average of six hours per day in front of a screen, a figure that jumps by one-third in the immediately following years. A failure to nurture real-life relationships can have profound consequences - one study in the UK specifically determined a connection between time spent on social media in the middle school age bracket and reduced well-being in later adolescence, particularly among girls, whose self-esteem dropped significantly.
Moreover, sedentary lifestyles are not conducive to physical well-being in growing children. While most companies require that a young person be at least 13 years old before establishing an account on the social media network, parents often allow their kids to bypass these guidelines and set up accounts when they are as young as 10 years old.
Hope Rising’s curriculum acts as a partial antidote to the potential hazards of a life lived online. It engages students in exercises designed to demonstrate the paramount importance of relationship building - which includes active listening, cooperation, empathy, and the ability to work with peers and adults on common goals that benefit, and offer a measure of satisfaction and happiness, to everyone involved.
The organization’s lesson plans emphasize responsible decision-making in all aspects of life, both offline and online. The ability to make constructive and respectful choices about personal behavior and social interactions can deter kids from toxic online interactions - the path of least resistance for bullies and online troublemakers.
Your role - as a parent, teacher, school supervisor, or overseer - is both simple and hard: how do you best encourage schoolchildren to live up to their potential as individuals and members of the community? The 'My Best Me' curriculum is designed by educators, psychologists, and learning experts to help you do just that. It helps you to help these kids - whatever their backgrounds and life experiences - thrive!
Go to https://hoperisingsel.com and see how this organization can give you the resources needed to make your students just a little bit better - happier, healthier, and wiser!
