Family Zone & Cyber Safety

Download Family Zone

Make use of the Family Zone Accounts which we are offering to John XXIII College families for free, as part of our College contract negotiations until 2020.

By setting up a private Family Zone account, you can apply age-appropriate parental controls on every device your child has access to, in any location. To find out more visit https://www.familyzone.com/johnxxiii-wa

Getting Started with Family Zone

Webinar for Beginners - 7pm, Tuesday, 3 September

Family Zone will present a demonstration of our world-leading parental controls for all John XXIII College parents.

The College has partnered with Australia’s leading provider of cyber safety and digital-awareness services, Family Zone. As part of our contract negotiations until 2020, we have managed to secure a number of Family Zone Accounts (Family Packs) which we are offering to John XXIII College families for free for a trial period.

To get you started, this webinar that will cover everything you need to know about our world-leading parental controls, including;

How to install and activate Family Zone
How to set bedtimes, study-times and play-times
How to place limits on gaming and social media
How to view and assess your child’s apps
Where to get help if you need it

Webinar will take place at 7:00pm on Tuesday, 3 September 2019.

Family Zone - Webinar flyer.pdf

Cyber Safety Webinar: Advanced with Family Zone

7pm, Tuesday, 10 September

If you've been using Family Zone for a while and are keen to learn more about our advanced features, then this webinar is for you!

Features, such as;

Locations
apps
Reports
Age profile Controls
Routine overwrites
Website whitelisting
Shared Parenting

Webinar will take place at 7:00pm on Tuesday, 10 September 2019.

Family Zone - Webinar flyer.pdf

How to be the digital mentor your child needs

Managing kids’ devices is critical for their health and wellbeing. But parents who also mentor their kids’ screen-time see the most positive outcomes.

Technology overuse is now the number-one fear of parents of teens - and mums and dads with toddlers and pre-schoolers aren’t far beyond.

And no wonder. Recent research from nonprofit Common Sense Media shows the average five-year-old now spends over two hours a day - or about 20% of their waking hours - on a screen. Tweens’ screen-time balloons to about six hours daily, while their teen-age brothers and sisters are on their devices for an average of nine hours a day. That’s over an hour longer than the typical full-time work day.

Not so long ago, an authoritarian “us versus them” approach was hailed as an effective digital parenting strategy, complete with rigid rules backed up by threats to disconnect or (the ultimate weapon) confiscate devices.

But in today’s always-connected digital landscape, there is one problem with that approach.

It doesn’t work.

The limits of control

Or so argue many cyber experts today. Dr. Devorah Heitner, a digital parenting expert and author Screenwise, is one of them. Heitner says parents who think confining screen-time to a magic number of minutes a day are kidding themselves.

The key to ensuring our kids’ digital wellbeing, she argues, is understanding why they’re using their devices - and helping them shift their habits in more healthy directions.

Far from showing that, for example, social media “causes” depression or anxiety in young people, the research increasingly points to a complex, nuanced relationship between screens and wellbeing.

The key to ensuring our kids’ digital wellbeing is understanding why they’re using their devices - and helping them shift their habits in more healthy directions.

Oxford University researcher Amy Orben, for example, found the impact of technology use on teen’s mental health to be much less significant than previously thought. In fact, the effect is “so small that it’s surpassed by whether a teenager wears glasses to school,” she says.

Heitner also challenges the view that screen-time alone is “destroying a generation” in the words of one controversial article that appeared in The Atlantic in 2017.

“If you hand a happy kid a phone, they’re not going to turn into an unhappy, miserable kid,” she insists - although it can “turn up the volume” on underlying issues like anxiety or ADHD.

Screen-time management 101

So what approach should parents take?

First, they do need to impose some non-negotiable time-management rules. Devices need to be banned at the dinner table, full stop, and they also need to be disconnected at bedtime, preferably an hour before sleep. In these two instances, the research is clear.

Children need to switch off before bed to ensure good quality sleep, and to remove the temptation to “vamp” on their devices into the wee hours.

And mealtimes too need to be kept tech-free, as a way to facilitate conversation and family bonding - not to mention simple eye contact!

Managing internet use during study time is another way parents can apply sensible rules to their children’s screen-time.

But the overall approach with the best chance of success, say experts, is mentoring.

What is mentoring?

“Mentoring is knowing the difference between Minecraft and Fortnite,” says Heitner - and considering how playing in a competitive mode (Fortnite) will have different effects compared to a collaborative mode (Minecraft).

Mentoring means not belittling your daughter’s YouTube addiction - but understanding that the channels she follows may be discussing issues that matter to her, like body image and self-esteem.

It means examining why your son’s love of Twitch - where he watches other people play online games - strikes you as a waste of time.

(As one boy told his parents, “When you watch sports, you’re watching another person playing a game. Why is it so different when you’re watching a person play a video game?”)

But mentoring goes beyond understanding your children’s online habits. It also involves being more proactive about introducing non-screen-based activity. Heitner is a fan of children of all ages doing more chores - starting at pre-school age. She also encourages parents to integrate more fun, screen-free family activities, whether boardgames, hobbies or outdoor activities.

Encourage them to self-regulate

But mum and dad won’t always be there to enforce their rules or reinforce their values. Ultimately what our children need to develop most is self-regulation skills. One way to do this is to ask your children to monitor their own moods after a particular online activity, whether social media or gaming. A colour chart can be a fun and easy way of doing this.

What they discover about themselves may prove to be the most powerful screen-time control tool of all.