Tons of documentation on this. #1 keep them off social media. No smart phone, no access to the internet unless parents know what they are doing with it (home work).. Kids need something that's THEIRS like a sport/dance/art/music/clubs they can feel good about themselves because of their participation. Kids need to get out of their own me me me. They need to give back. Be involved in organizations where they are serving others.

By making sure that you keep lines of communication and the opportunity to communicate open. Make an effort to have dinner as a family and discuss such subjects and what your teen has seen or heard, build within them the capacity to think things out and make appropriate choices.

Teach them. Arm them with as much knowledge as possible. Maybe you could go online with them and show them what's appropriate and what is not. Critical knowledge is only obtained by revealing the possibilities. Walking alongside children while they do these sorts of things usually helps them.

It's always sad when a child who has had no possibilities shown to them gets out into the world and doesn't know what to do with what they're handed because they've never had to/been able to

" keep them off social media. No smart phone, no access to the internet "

This can't be serious but I think it may be. Good luck with this approach, a sure fire way to raise kids who will resent their parents as adults. .

The job of parents is to coach, motivate and give guidance to their kids by exposing them to the world. Not by isolating them from it. Help them to develop, plan out their directions and set (and often change) goals that are way points to where they want to wind up.

There are no silver bullets, no one road to take. A given approach may work for one kid and fail completely for another.

Kids can't raise themselves. Parents shouldn't think they can outsource the work to this organization, or that activity, or whatever, expecting that that will be enough. Parenting is a full time, full contact sport without helmets and pads. Those who don't want to take personal responsibility for raising their kids shouldn't have any, it's unfair to the kids.

A million likes, Elmer.

There are no silver bullets, no one road to take. A given approach may work for one kid and fail completely for another.

If you wait until your child is an adolescent to consider these questions, you have lost the battle. Children need to be known by their parents, encouraged to engage in what is going on around them, understand what works and what does not work from a very young age. Whatever is going on in the culture, you should be able to discuss with your child in an age appropriate way. Decisions about boundaries around behaviors and such should happen well before the child finds himself in a situation where he or she needs to consider the problem.

Fail to establish a strong rapport with your child early on and other forces will gladly step in and fill the vacuum.

I heard Michelle Obama on Jimmy Kimmel last night. She spoke about her two daughters who were so opposite from each other. She said her mother always said, 'parent the child you have.'

There is nothing cut in stone.

Her mother raised her and her siblings to be responsible for getting up for school each morning (bought each child their own alarm clock), they were responsible to get dressed etc. and get to school on time.

Michelle now feels that early sense of responsibility for their own life shaped her and her siblings.

She said her mother was always up in the morning but expected her children to take to do what they had to do.

Jane

Greatest influence, IMHO, is good parenting during infancy, as a toddler, and early school-age childhood - before adolescence.
Prevention is more effective than intervention/treatment.

This: Decisions about boundaries around behaviors and such should happen well before the child finds himself in a situation where he or she needs to consider the problem.

someone suggested no social media or smart phones. In this day and age: impossible. Libraries have computers. Schools have computers. Friends have computer. If you want your kid sneaking around and doing things behind your back; that's an open invitation.

When my kids were younger I worked day and night, and was open for any shift day including weekends. They never had a babysitter while I worked. My oldest watched them on the days I wasn't there when they got home from school, but only for a couple hours until either my husband or myself came home. Once my kids were teens, I changed jobs and made sure I was home weekends and evenings. Someone once said, "why do you make sure you're home then? They're teens! They can take care of themselves!" Uhm......... NO. NO they can't. A two year old doesn't need the same care a 13 year old does. Teens are too impressionable and that's when they need their parents home the most! We had our first computer and I made sure that I could always see what they were doing online. I wasn't reading over their shoulder, but they knew that if I walked by and glanced at the monitor and they covered the screen, or changed browswers quickly, they weren't allowed on it anymore. I had the mother board under lock and key when we weren't home. And my youngest tried EVERYTHING to jimmy the lock. ;) As parents, it's our responsibility to shape our children and if they've been misinformed about anything, it's our job to educate them.

I made sure my kids could talk to us about anything and I do mean ANYTHING. They didn't take sex-ed in school: I taught them. While my kids aren't perfect and my youngest gave me more grey hairs than I like to admit, I think we did a pretty good job with our kids.

Incredibly well-done Elmer, a million likes from me too.

I agree. Start young and be consistent.

Indeed - adolescence is way too late to think you can control a kid's choices and attitudes. The goal is to nurture a functional, healthy person who makes good choices because they want to, not because someone makes them do so.

And it is also very true that those who are around you when you're an adolescent (i.e. peer groups) have a huge influence on the adult you become. Being involved and making sure your kids aren't afraid to come to you with their questions and problems is the best inoculant against bad influences.

Unfortunately, not every kid is graced with parents who are functional and healthy.

What doesn't work is raising them with no boundaries. Giving them the impression they are the sole director of their destiny. Allowing media and advertisers to be their most influential feed back machines. Feeding the fact that they can't see around corners and make adult decisions with the limited brain power they have.

make adult decisions with the limited brain power they have.

Children have plenty of brain power. They lack experience and knowledge.

Zalco/bring back Sophie! Yes, they have plenty of brain power, but the part of their brain that controls decision making is not fully developed, and won't be until their twenties. That why they can often make dumb decisions, just like we did at that age. That is why children need parents or other adults to guide them until they gain knowledge and experience.

" What doesn't work is raising them with no boundaries. Giving them the impression they are the sole director of their destiny. Allowing media and advertisers to be their most influential feed back machines "

This comment and the one Zalco quoted above seems to be arcy in her anonymous mode. Get with the program if so, you're demonstrating what happens when someone only acts in accordance with external boundaries and doesn't know how to make good decisions.

This is a defeatist, unenlightened attitude. If someone is trained to do anything they want so long as they're within stated boundaries, then they grow up with the practice they can do everything they want when they no longer perceive boundaries. It's how you train robots and dogs, not children.

This reminds me of the fish parable, give a person a fish to feed them for one day, teach them how to fish to feed them for their lifetime. Kids need to be taught how to fish - they will carry the boundaries of clear thinking and good judgement with them wherever they go and no matter what they face.

I've been under the impression free speech was a thing each generation lived through in their adolescent stage, and today is nothing new or unique. It's full of the same rhetoric seen in the past, just a different theme and another time, and even Socrates complained how rotten and misguided the youth of his time were. So do you really see a difference from past generations compared to the present and believe they need protected from something?

Most of anything to do with limiting free speech over the last couple hundred years usually happened because of a political agenda beginning with the first sedition act of 1789 that made it illegal to say anything bad in print about the government. And to this day the same political game is still in play but has always been corrected when the truth finally made it to the surface. The truth eventually comes out regardless of how hard the repressive force tried to suppress it, and positive changes were eventually made thorough the repeal of laws or court rulings and the constitution.

But right now the Truth is harder to find and a special find because corporations are limiting free speech for a political agenda and I believe is unique to this generation of adolescents over the past. I recommend directing the poor misguided vulnerable person to the truth without bias, It's out there. Socrates said “I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think” and this is all you can do with just the truths to there confusion and let them think for themselves just as you did 90 years ago.