How to Talk to Your Kids in the Digital Age

Feb. 28, 2006 -- -- Theresa Keane is a single mom who works 40-plus hours a week in a job that makes it tough to call her kids. To stay in touch with her 15-year-old daughter, Lizzy, Theresa will do whatever it takes, like taking a picture of a Dr Pepper can and sending it to Lizzy's cell phone.

"My mom will check in with me when I'm at school, on the bus, whenever," Lizzy said.

Using the image and text-messaging capabilities on their cell phones, Theresa and Lizzy "text" each other three or four times each day. "I text my mom if I'm bored or need to deal with logistics like, 'When are you picking me up? Can I go to a movie?' Stuff like that," Lizzy said.

The two keep an open line of communication throughout the day, and both mother and daughter say it has made their relationship stronger.

"It's like an extra-long umbilical cord," Theresa said. She sees the advent of computer-based instant-messaging programs, cell phones and text messaging as ways to get immediate "mommy gratification."

Theresa explains that when she gets a "guilty, worried, 'I want to talk to my kid' feeling," she sends a text message to Lizzy. Her daughter's return text gives Theresa a shot of instant gratification, reassuring her that everything is status quo.

But for many parents, learning to communicate with teens via cell phone text or instant-messaging programs is akin to learning a new language. Some parents even see e-mailing their kids as foreign and impersonal, so the switch to technologies like IM or instant messaging and texting is an even bigger leap.

But for today's 12- to 18-year-olds, it's all about these new short-format communications. According to the Pew Internet Life Study on Teens and Technology published in June 2005, 75 percent of teens are online, a whopping 66 percent of teens use instant messaging, and 33 percent of teens use cell phone-based text messaging.

In focus groups for the Pew study, teens described e-mail as a way to "talk to old people," communicate with institutions like schools and businesses, or disseminate information to a large group of people at once. For teens, instant messaging and texting are much more casual ways to communicate, and they do it a lot.