Photo credit: house2house.brighthouse.com

Being a parent is both the most rewarding and the hardest job any parent can have. When it comes to our kids, we want the best for them and we simply can’t get away with the fact that we can be over protective.

These days, kids are getting hooked online and on gadgets. Gone are the days of our past generations wherein we spent our days purely with toys and with our friends playing around. In order to understand them, we need to learn and live with the technology in order to cope with them.

According to a study conducted by the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI), 78 percent of parents these days believed that the technology will have a generally positive effect on their children’s futures, careers and life skills. But the big question here is, how do we limit them or how can we limit them to such things that we can protect them from further harm?

FOSI also revealed that 87 percent of parents say they have rules for their children’s technology use. Those limitations may simply still vary depending on the situation the parents are facing. 55 percent of those parents said that they let their child under 12 to open their social networking account.

According to FOSI, “That’s a rather challenging figure,” said FOSI Executive Director Stephen Balkam, whose organization designed the Good Digital Parenting initiative to educate parents about how to deal with this brave new world. Organizations like his, he said, as well as technology firms and the government must do more to educate parents about exploiting the benefits – and avoiding the dangers – of the online world. “Everyone has different but overlapping responsibilities,” he said.

Every one of us is responsible and is required to take an action towards our goal, and that is to protect the young. Parents also struggle on how they manage themselves on technology use, and they often grade themselves an average grade of B, and it is fine as they still can improve and learn.

Balkam said that despite the pitfalls that parents may face, he is an “eternal optimist” about parents being able to handle whatever new technology throws at them. Jennifer Hanley, FOSI’s director of legal and policy said more parents are working to make technology use a positive experience in their homes. “That’s important for us: Those parents are allowing online exploration, but it’s safe and fun.”