This is a two-part webinar series.  Each topic will be offered twice to provide flexible attendance options.

SERIES PART 1

Drug Availability via Social Media: What Families Should Know and Do
June 3rd: 9:00am-10:00am & 12:00pm-1:00pm

This session will address the increasing use of social media platforms to promote and distribute harmful substances to youth.  Participating in this training will equip educators, parents, and guardians with the knowledge and tools needed to recognize, prevent, and respond to this growing risk.

During this training, participants will learn how to:
• Identify digital drug-related slang, symbols, and trends
• Monitor online activity effectively
• Foster open and honest conversations with youth
• Partner with schools, policymakers, and tech platforms to drive change

Through real-life examples and visual case studies, this session will leave participants better prepared to protect the young people in their life—both online and offline.

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SERIES PART 2

Parenting Tech-Savvy Youth: Promoting Positive Use While Preventing Abuse
June 4th: 12:00pm-1:00pm & 5:00pm-6:00pm

This training will help parents, guardians, and other youth-serving adults:
• Understand the current political and social landscape involving youth, social media, gaming, and well-being
• Consider the most popular online environments among youth today
• Understand the scope and prevalence of bullying, cyberbullying, hate speech, sexting, digital dating abuse, generative AI harms, and related problem behaviors
• Learn ways to best inquire about and respond to their technology use and abuse
• Discover the most promising techniques for instruction, rule setting, communication, discipline, encouragement, and modeling
• Learn research-based parenting approaches designed to induce moral and ethical choices online (and offline)
• Develop strategies to sharpen your ability to informally and formally monitor their actions
• Learn how to report technology misuse when you spot it, and how best to assist both aggressors and targets
• Learn specific ways to cultivate empathy, resilience, self-awareness, and intentionality among your children
• Learn how to work with social media, messaging, and gaming platforms
• Learn how to work with schools, other parents, attorneys, and related stakeholders as necessary
• Consider best practices when it comes to balancing screentime
• Consider recommended hardware and software solutions to keep tabs on your child's communications and connections

This training seeks to share evolving best practices that can be proactively implemented in communities to prevent and reduce technology misuse.  Foundational information related to how youth use social media, gaming platforms, messaging apps, and their devices is first provided before examining a variety of risks and harms - including cyberbullying, sexting, digital self-harm, and more. Practical strategies for identification, prevention, and response are then discussed extensively in a conversational format to allow for input and Q&A from the audience. Particular attention is given to improving communication, cultivating empathy and resilience, developing a moral compass, identifying non-negotiable values and beliefs, finding stable sources of identity, growing in self-control, prioritizing maturity and responsibility, and solving problems in a way that all parties are satisfied. Attendees will leave encouraged, empowered and equipped with an increased ability to promote safe and responsible participation in cyberspace among the youth they care for, and with numerous resources to assist them towards those ends.