I still don’t think that “sexting” – sending a suggestive or explicit picture via cell phone – is crime that rises to the level of lock-them-up-and-throw-away-the key, particularly when the perpetrators all are minors.
But neither …

I am not in favor of bullying.
I am not against school officials taking swift action against anyone who breaks the rules or laws on their campuses.
I am, however, opposed to making principals in charge of …

As I unloaded a trunkload of guy goodies last week, a tiny chunk of petulant poutiness came sneaking up from my gut. It worked its way to my throat, where it stuck for the next …

Why is it that Boots can “die” endlessly on Mario and still go back for more, yet he used to get frustrated to near tears if he wasn’t the first to answer a question in …

I am an awful, awful mom.
Just like thousands of other 2- to 5-year-olds worldwide, Boots cannot tie his shoes. He can’t make breakfast, though he can make quesadillas or Sunbutter and jelly sandwiches for lunch. …

It’s an event almost as foreseeable as predicting that someone this week will call today’s kids “the dumbest generation”:
A family will “unplug” – shed all electronics for an arbitrary period. Let’s say, oh, six months. …

I knew it was coming the second I heard that the Internet was tangentially connect to Rutgers University student Tyler Clementi’s suicide.
Yes, tangentially. The Internet did not kill Clementi. It wasn’t even a weapon in …

These kids  just don’t know how easy they have it.
Back in the day when I was walking four miles to the bus stop, up hill both ways, I needed a radio, a tape recorder, cassettes, …

Note to California State Sen. Ellen Corbett: Social networking sites do not post personal information about minors. The minors themselves do that.
That’s why Corbett’s bill, which The Sacramento Bee says would ban sites from posting …

Forget all the discussion about where we’re going to live when Dad gets out of the Army. As far as I’m concerned, it’s settled. We are moving to Madera County.
Yes, that Madera County, the one …

It was, admittedly, a new take on the old “these kids and their short attention spans and self-absorbed natures are ruining the world” spiel.
Instead, a British education union leader blamed a culture of “instant gratification,” …

If computer manufacturers wanted to do the world a big favor they’d include, not a shortcut to software,but a direct link to snopes.com on every box sold.
It wouldn’t end all the “Starbucks is anti-military” emails …

Every time Big Guy’s class has a substitute teacher, his regular one says she’ll get a report about their behavior from her “spies” when she gets back.
She’s joking. In a certain school district in suburban …

It’s ironic that Google rolled out Safety Mode parental controls for YouTube in the same week that it made gmail unsafe for some folks in its careless rollout of Buzz.
Some of the early things I’d …

Angela Mejia had had it.
Her 14-year-old son had been camped at his PlayStation for hours. When the dulcet tones of “Grand Theft Auto” – that a junior high kid was playing that game to begin …

Big Guy is an active, curious, loquacious – Lord, is he loquacious – kid who loves zipping around the neighborhood on his bike, playing with friends and torturing his brother.
He also loves SuperPoke Pets on …

I’ll admit it: The commercial where stoic, pseudo-intellectual teens take turns replacing body parts with Fruit by the Foot is funny.
I’ll also admit that it started the guys clamoring for Fruit by the Foot with …

Turns out that all those hours I spent at my brother’s house staring goggle-eyed at a screen, cursing the little blocks that wouldn’t fall into place weren’t a waste of vacation time at all.
In fact, …

It’s right chivalrous of Education Networks of America to take the fall for officials in two Tennessee school districts that were sued after they banned students from accessing Web sites with information about lesbian, gay, …

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s push to put free digital textbooks in Californias high schools by this fall is so enticing on so many levels, the biggest of which is in the fewer number of trees that …

Multitasking ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. Particularly for this generation of teens, which learned the art of the overload practically from the cradle.
Take a few electronic gizmos – say, a computer and a …

You just gotta love California, though I suspect the state’s predicament is more amusing to residents of the other 49 than it is to those of us who live here.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature …

I’m a Mean Mom with old fogey leanings. It’s the worst possible combination.
Just ask Big Guy, who’s reduced to bartering Batman stickers for Nintendo DS time because I won’t buy him one.
Just ask Boots, whose …

Dad, you are forgiven for consistently running up overage charges even though you swore for months that you’d quit yapping and there was no need to go to a more expensive plan that would save …

Coming to a town near you: The arrest of a teen on child pornography charges for taking pictures of herself.
It happened again this week in New Jersey, when a 14-year-old was arrested after posting nude …

Scholastic Inc.’s effort to push toys and trinkets on kids in the name of reading: Bad
Chuck E. Cheese’s generous offer to give schools 15 percent of the take from fund-raisers held at its restaurants: Tempting, …

There’s been a new celebrity in Big Guy’s class since school resumed after Christmas break. Every morning before the bell, three or four kids cloister around him, in awe at his status as a cool …

Rule of thumb for the guys: You won’t get in nearly as much trouble for what you do as you will for lying about it.
That’s what a 14-year-old Wisconsin girl found out last week when …