Issues Facing College Arts Students When Transferring

A recent survey that shows one-third of parents of high school students say they are considering sending their child to a local community college for two years and then transferring the student to a four-year school.  Sounds like a practical plan for financial reasons, but for arts students, a college transfer can be a major obstacle in the pursuit of their dreams.

Why? For students in the performing arts—from voice to musical instrument to drama and dance—the three most important criteria to success are auditions, auditions, auditions. The fact is, by the time a transfer student hits the stage at their new college or conservatory, their peers who may have been there for a year or

two, have already proven themselves. The competition is more intense to get roles, get cast, or to play in the orchestra, because other students have already earned the confidence of those who make the decisions in such matters. Bias exists, it’s a fact of life. In addition, existing students have likely already formed close relationships, and gotten involved in school activities such as chamber groups, ensembles, or a cappella groups that don’t include the “new kid.” New students, even with two years of training elsewhere, are starting from scratch. It’s not a level playing field.

Students of visual arts face challenges of their own. Their peer students who have been enrolled in the “new” college since freshman year may have already had gallery exhibits on campus or off and be making a name for themselves.  Access to studios or other workspace may be limited and those with seniority know how to work the system. New students are challenged when collaborative projects are assigned, because the existing students already know the strengths, weaknesses, and personalities of their classmates.

Whether the student is pursuing visual or performing arts, they are working toward a degree in a very specific curriculum.  Studying the arts takes a passion that is generally not found in students of liberal arts, communications, or many other majors. The hours of practice an arts student has invested by the time

he or she gets to college is likely unmatched by students of many other majors. Therefore, arts students rarely transfer out of their major. They are pursuing a dream they have had for years, possibly since childhood. For this reason, there may be few openings at the target university or conservatory into which the arts student hopes to transfer.

Arts students, like others, also have to struggle with issues of course credit transfers, especially between

non-accredited and accredited schools.  In addition, many colleges don’t give transfer students the attention that freshman may receive for a variety of reasons.  The first and main reason is that freshmen students are more profitable. Since transfer students may be able to transfer at least some credits from general education classes and will likely live in off-campus housing, they do not contribute as much financially as a freshman student who lives on campus.

The adjustment to the new school is another issue that transfer students face. Colleges roll out the red carpet to make freshmen feel welcome and at home. That is not necessarily true for transfer students. When transfer students are included in freshmen activities, they often feel out of place because they are older and already have some college experience.

Yet transferring schools is not impossible for the arts student.  They must keep in mind that hard work pays off. Brush up your audition skills or portfolio, use your experience to create compelling essays, and master the presentations schools require.  Most important of all, be both realistic about the challenges and

excited about the journey ahead.

Written by Halley Shefler for IECA Insights 

Posted by Lindy Kahn, M.A., CEP for Kahn Educational Group, LLC

What to Expect When Your College Freshman Comes Home For The Holidays

Here are some tips about how to interact with your college freshman coming home for the holidays 

After three-plus months of living at school, your college freshman has gotten used to being on his or her own. And you’ve become accustomed to a quieter house. But now he/she’s coming home for the holidays, and your household routine is about to be disrupted.

Levester Johnson, vice president for student affairs at Butler University, says parents need to be prepared to navigate those waters. “Their student is going to have a stronger desire for independence,” he said. “He or she has had several months to figure out how late they want to stay in bed, how long they want to stay up at night and how late they stay out. Parents are going to see a changed individual as it relates to those daily habits. They should also notice more maturity, and more introspection, perhaps.”

To keep order – and structure – Johnson recommends that parents maintain rules their student would be used to and expects to come back to. Like curfew.

“But you don’t want to go to an extreme – being too strict or saying I don’t care,” he said. “Loosen the rules, but don’t get rid of them. Even though they want more independence, there has to be a pragmatic approach. It’s only been a few months they’ve been away. They continue to need structure.”

Johnson said parents also should make the most of this time to ask a lot of questions about what’s happening in their student’s life in four broad areas: day to day living; finances; health; and the future.

Day to day: He recommends asking: How are classes going? Tell me about faculty members. Talk to me about your grades, your friends, your activities. “You want to make sure they’re engaged in the campus community,” he said. “Because that’s really what’s going to keep them there: How did they make a connection and have they found that niche in their first semester?”

Finances: Your student is also starting to develop life skills, so you should ask: How are you managing your money? What major expenses are you expecting when you return to school? Are you considering options for earning additional funds such as student work or an off-campus job to off-set college expenses?

Health: Are they taking care of themselves? Eating right? Exercising? Studying late in the residence hall or library? “Get into well-being issues to make sure they’re taking care of themselves,” Johnson suggested.

The future: Ask: What’s coming up? How are your grades? What are you doing next semester? What are your spring break plans? What are your summer plans? Work? Internship? Coming home? “They need to start working on that as soon as they get back to school in January,” he said.

“During their first semester, students do a lot of testing of the waters, and they have probably learned some valuable lessons,” Johnson said. “Whether they’ll tell parents that right away, probably not. That’s the reason for the probing questions. Through that reflection and those conversations, that’s where you’ll hear the maturity. If you’re just looking at physical changes, those won’t be as apparent. It’ll be in the conversations and the probing of their experiences.”

But, Johnson cautioned, don’t expect answers in the first 24 hours.

“They’re probably going to sleep,” he said. “Give them time to acclimate to the room they used for 18 years.”

Written by Dr. Levester Johnson, Butler University

Posted by Lindy Kahn, M.A., CEP for Kahn Educational Group, LLC

Social Media: New Ways to Pick the Best College for You

Social media sites are dramatically changing the way teens and colleges connect with each other to find the perfect match. Today, a teenager can take a tour of a campus, attend a class, chat with an admission officer and accumulate enough reconnaissance on a school to fill a book — all from thousands of miles away.

Three free sites in particular — Cappex, Zinch and the colleges’ fan pages on Facebook — let students reach out to particular colleges or hope that schools using the sites will discover them (or both). Beyond matchmaking, the sites have clever ways students can research schools: snazzy admission tools, videos, and information on scholarships and financial aid, all served up in easy-to-use formats.

“The traditional high school visits have passed us by,” observes Bob Patterson, deputy director of undergraduate admissions at the University of California, Berkeley. “I see more and more students interacting over the Web.” Berkeley is increasingly using social media to reach students, rather than having its admission reps parachute in to visit high schools.

Cappex and Zinch, which didn’t even exist three years ago, are especially useful in letting students and schools look beyond their regions to find each other. During the past admission season, for example, more than three in 10 high school students who contacted Kalamazoo College, a highly ranked liberal arts school in Michigan, came through Zinch or Cappex.

Facebook college pages are pretty much like any other Facebook interest page, letting you keep up with the latest news and chat with other fans. But Cappex and Zinch work more like matchmakers: Students create profiles on the sites to locate colleges that seem like good fits, while colleges tell the online firms the type of students they’d like to find. Schools might be looking for students with certain grade point averages or standardized test scores, or they may be interested in highly tailored searches. (For instance, a school could use Zinch and Cappex to locate minority teens from the Midwest who play an instrument, maintain at least a 3.4 GPA, and are looking for a medium-sized university near a city.) The sites share their matches with colleges, but the schools won’t know a student’s identity unless the teenager wants to share it.

Meghan Conroy, a college student who attended high school in Neptune, N.J., found Cappex, Zinch, and Facebook offered a huge boost in researching and reaching out to schools. “These sites have so much information in one location,” says Conroy. “It was easier than buying those huge books like the Princeton Review, and it was cheaper.”

Here are closer looks at Cappex, Zinch, and Facebook college fan pages as well as the most helpful features on them:

Cappex

Cappex has about 3,000 schools in its database, including four-year colleges, online, and for-profit schools. Helpful features incude:

* Merit scholarships: Cappex has assembled information on roughly 79,000 merit scholarships offered by particular colleges. Merit scholarships are larger than private scholarships, which are often worth less than $2,000. When I typed in Washington University in St. Louis, I instantly obtained a list of 21 scholarships from the school (nearly all renewable) ranging from $2,500 for dance majors to more than $37,000 for humanities, architecture and science majors.

* Handicapping acceptance: The site’s What Are My Chances? Calculator can generate scattergrams for specific schools, showing their acceptance rates for students who participated in Cappex. The calculator also provides its own assessment of whether the student has a realistic chance of admission into a particular school. When I used it to see if my imaginary California junior could get into Wake Forest, the software concluded that she had just a middling chance of admission.

Zinch

Zinch casts a smaller net than Cappex because it focuses on traditional four-year colleges. The 700-plus schools that participate include the likes of Yale, MIT, Wellesley, Johns Hopkins, Stanford and Vanderbilt, along with hundreds of lesser-known institutions. Among its advantages:

* Social networking: One of Zinch’s big selling points is that teenagers can network on the site so they can instantly discover other students interested in the same colleges and compare notes. A Zinch user can click on other students’ names (first names only) and find out where they attend high school, their profiles, and the colleges that have expressed an interest in them. Students can also screen for classmates from their own schools.

* ‘Shout outs’: College admissions staffers can only contact a Zinch user if the student has chosen to click on the college’s Zinch link and make a “shout out” to the school — sending in his or her own profile information, and getting access to You Tube videos and photos about the school, a discussion board, and other information. When UC Berkeley began using Zinch, the college wasn’t prepared for the avalanche of 1,000 “shout outs” it received in the first month.

Facebook

Visit a college’s Facebook fan page and you’re likely to see virtual campus tours, You Tube videos, photos, comments from current and prospective students, and standard admissions information. Applicants can ask questions or post comments on fan pages; some schools even let them apply through Facebook, giving whole new meaning to the phrase “common app.” Nearly 90 percent of four-year colleges have Facebook fan pages, according to BlueFuego, a higher-ed media consultant.

Many college experts say Facebook fan pages are most beneficial for students who have finalized their list of schools they’ll apply to or ones who’ve been accepted. Before then, teenagers don’t want colleges intruding on their Facebook territory, which they consider their social refuge, says Shelley Krause, co-director of college counseling at Rutgers Preparatory School in New Jersey. Among the Facebook pages’ uses:

* Admissions access: Admission officers use their Facebook fan pages to quickly knock down rumors, correct misinformation in the ether, and to answer applicants’ questions. You can see a lot of errors, for instance, on College Confidential, a popular site with discussion boards about individual colleges.

* Meet and greet: Accepted students can begin their acclimation to college early by participating in their institution’s Facebook fan page. Through this forum, teens can begin meeting their classmates online months before freshmen orientation. That just might make them more chipper at home and more likely to talk with you, which is a nice side benefit.

Written by Lynn O'Shaughnessy for CBS MoneyWatch
Posted by Lindy Kahn, M.A., CEP for Kahn Educational Group, LLC

Preparing to Make the Most of Your College Tour

Every year, people spend a good deal of money to check out colleges, but rather than returning home with the information they were seeking, they often find themselves exhausted and more confused than before. This is especially disheartening for students who will have the opportunity to visit colleges that are far from home only once.

In my experience, the most productive college tours have been well thought out and reasonably planned. Here are a few simple things you can do before you ever leave home to hopefully make your college tour more productive - and pleasant.

Do your research. Before you decide which schools to visit, find out everything you can about them. Make sure they have the all the programs you are looking for and that you have a reasonable chance of being admitted there. While you’re on the schools’ websites, be sure to check out their information about visiting campus. Make sure to note whether you have to register for tours in advance, the phone number for Admissions, as well as the procedure for sitting in on a class.

Make a reasonable plan. Once you’ve done your research, decide which schools would be the most helpful to visit. I strongly recommend that you pace your college tour in such a way that you visit no more than two colleges a day. This will give you enough time to do more than just the standard tour, as well as help prevent all the colleges from blending together. If this will be your only chance to visit a campus, take the opportunity to sit in on a class - if allowed - and speak with someone in Admissions. These last two things may need to be set up well in advance of your arrival, so be sure to give them a call at least 2 weeks before you plan to be there.

Make a list of the information you want to get from each college. Take the time to consider what you would like to know about each college that you weren’t able to get from your research. (i.e. Do a lot of the more local students go home on the weekend?) Be sure to get your all your questions answered at every college you visit so you can compare them. Just a hint: don’t feel like you need to limit your questions to your tour guide or admissions reps. Go ahead and ask other students you may meet on campus. If your question can only be answered by a professor in a certain discipline, be sure to ask the people in admissions if they can arrange for you to speak with one of those professors. (This is another thing that needs to be set up well in advance.)

Make the most of your meals and lodging. As you plan your college tour, keep in mind that there’s more to college than classes and campus buildings. This can be an excellent opportunity to get a better sense of the atmosphere on and around the school. Choose lodging close to the colleges you are visiting whenever possible, so you can get a sense of the “flavor” of the area. When it comes to meals, be sure to have lunch in the dining commons of whatever school you’re visiting at the time. In the evening, make the effort to eat at a restaurant near a different campus on your tour to get yet another perspective on campus life. Not sure which restaurant to try? Try using the school’s Facebook page to ask for recommendations from current students.

Take care of the logistics. There are some things you can’t control such as flight delays or rental car snafus, but the better prepared you are for your college tour, the more likely the small stuff won’t ruin it. Here are a few of my logistical recommendations. Confirm all reservations. Check the weather forecast before you pack, so you have the right clothes with you. Have printed directions and a map with you- just in case the rental place runs out of GPS systems or it malfunctions. Allow enough time to find parking and locate the Admissions Office. Make sure you wear comfortable walking shoes for campus tours. If you have been dealing with a specific admissions rep, be sure to have their name and phone number with you in case you run into a problem.

Discuss expectations before you leave the house. A college tour isn’t exactly a vacation where everyone can do their own thing. In order to run smoothly, everyone needs to know what is expected of them. Parents and students should talk about what parts of the college tour they will do together (i.e. campus tour) and which ones they will not (i.e. eating in the dining commons). Discussing seemingly small things, such as what time you will need to get up each day, can be important in preventing unnecessary tension. The key is to clearly communicate expectations with each other in advance in order to avoid potential misunderstandings later.

Once you’ve done this, you’re ready to pack your bags and find out exactly what the colleges on your tour have to offer you.

Written by Julie Manhan

Posted by Lindy Kahn, M.A., CEP for Kahn Educational Group, LLC

More Professors Give Out Hand-Held Devices to Monitor Students and Engage Them

If any of the 70 undergraduates in Prof. Bill White’s “Organizational Behavior” course at Northwestern University are late for class, or not paying attention, he will know without having to scan the lecture hall.

Their “clickers” will tell him.

Every student in Mr. White’s class has been assigned a palm-size, wireless device that looks like a TV remote but has a far less entertaining purpose. With their clickers in hand, the students in Mr. White’s class automatically clock in as “present” as they walk into class.

They then use the numbered buttons on the devices to answer multiple-choice quizzes that count for nearly 20 percent of their grade, and that always begin precisely one minute into class. Later, with a click, they can signal to their teacher without raising a hand that they are confused by the day’s lesson.

But the greatest impact of such devices — which more than a half-million students are using this fall on several thousand college campuses — may be cultural: they have altered, perhaps irrevocably, the nap schedules of anyone who might have hoped to catch a few winks in the back row, and made it harder for them to respond to text messages, e-mail and other distractions.

In Professor White’s 90-minute class, as in similar classes at Harvard, the University of Arizona and Vanderbilt, barely 15 minutes pass without his asking students to “grab your clickers” to provide feedback

Though some Northwestern students say they resent the potential Big Brother aspect of all this, Jasmine Morris, a senior majoring in industrial engineering, is not one of them.

“I actually kind of like it,” Ms. Morris said after a class last week. “It does make you read. It makes you pay attention. It reinforces what you’re supposed to be doing as a student.”

Inevitably, some students have been tempted to see clickers as “cat and mouse” game pieces. Noshir Contractor, who teaches a class on social networking to Northwestern undergraduates, said he began using clickers in spring 2008 — and, not long after, watched a student array perhaps five of the devices in front of him.

The owners had skipped class, but their clickers had made it.

Professor Contractor said he tipped his cap to the students’ creativity — this was, after all, a class on social networking — but then reminded them that there “are other ways to count attendance,” and that, by the way, they were all signatories to the school’s honor principle. The practice stopped, he said.

Though the technology is relatively new, preliminary studies at Harvard and Ohio State, among other institutions, suggest that engaging students in class through a device as familiar to them as a cellphone — there are even applications that convert iPads and BlackBerrys into class-ready clickers — increases their understanding of material that may otherwise be conveyed in traditional lectures.

The clickers are also gaining wide use in middle and high schools, as well as at corporate gatherings. Whatever the setting, audience responses are received on a computer at the front of the room and instantly translated into colorful bar graphs displayed on a giant monitor.

The remotes used at Northwestern were made by Turning Technologies, a company in Youngstown, Ohio, and are compatible with PowerPoint. Depending on the model, the hand-helds can sell for $30 to $70 each. Some colleges require students to buy them; others lend them to students.

Tina Rooks, the chief instructional officer for Turning Technologies, said the company expected to ship over one million clickers this year, with roughly half destined for about 2,500 university campuses, including community colleges and for-profit institutions. The company said its higher-education sales had grown 60 percent since 2008, and 95 percent since 2006.

At Northwestern, more than three dozen professors now use clickers in their classrooms. Professor White, who teaches industrial engineering, was among the first here to adopt them about six years ago.

He smiled knowingly when asked about some students’ professed dislike of the clickers.

“They should walk in with them in their hands, on time, ready to go,” he said.

Professor White acknowledged, though, that the clickers were hardly a silver bullet for engaging students, and that they were just one of many tools he employed, including video clips, guest speakers and calling on individual students to share their thoughts.

“Everyone learns differently,” he said. “Some learn watching stuff. Some learn by listening. Some learn by reading. I try to mix it all into every class.”

Many of Professor White’s students said the highlight of his class was often the display of results of a survey-via-clicker, when they could see whether their classmates shared their opinions. They also said that they appreciated the anonymity, and that while the professor might know how they responded, their peers would not.

Last week, for example, he flashed a photo of the university president, Morton Schapiro, onto the screen, along with a question, “Source of power?” followed by these possible answers:

“1. Coercive power” (sometimes punitive).

“2. Reward power.”

“3. Legitimate power” (typically by virtue of one’s office).

“4. Expert power” (more typically applied to someone like an electrician or a mechanic).

"5. Referent power” (usually tied to how the leader is viewed personally).

To Professor White’s seeming relief, a clear majority, 71 percent, chose No. 3, a sign that they considered his ultimate boss to be “legitimate.”

And then, to his delight, the students emerged from their electronic veils to register their opinions the old-fashioned way.

“They can be very reluctant to speak when they think they’re in the minority,” he said. “Once they see they’re not the only ones, they speak up more.”

Written by Jacques Steinberg for The New York Times
Posted by Lindy Kahn, M.A., CEP for Kahn Educational Group, LLC

6 College Admissions Tips for Artistic Students

If your child wants to major in musical theater or some other performing art, go ahead and blame it on Glee, American Idol or America's Got Talent.

Television shows make performing look fun, but the process of applying to colleges as a prospective visual or performing arts major is anything but. For these students, the admission process can be even more nerve wracking and time consuming because of requirements for auditions or portfolios.

To learn more about what's involved in being a prospective visual or performing art major, I talked with Halley Shefler, former dean of admissions at both the Boston Conservatory and the School of Music at Boston University. She is now a college consultant at The Arts Edge, which works with students who want to major in music, theatre, arts, and dance.

Here are six of Shefler's suggestions on how artistic students—and their parents—can navigate the admission process:

1. Don't apply where everybody else is. Ambitious students who are aiming for the same elite schools that are on everyone's short list will usually be disappointed. These schools are overrun with applications and will reject most students. In musical theater, for instance, applicants tend to flock to the University of Michigan, New York University, Boston Conservatory, Carnegie Mellon University, and the College-Conservatory of Music, which is part of the University of Cincinnati.

Other wonderful school in musical theater, Shefler suggests, include Syracuse University, University of the Arts, Elon University, Otterbein College, Point Park University, Millikin University, Montclair State University, and Florida State University.

"You don't need to go to Juilliard, NYU, or the Cincinnati Conservatory to make it in the arts," Shefler emphasized.

2. Solicit opinions from experts. It's a reality that many stage parents believe their teenagers are far more talented than they are. With inflated opinions of their abilities, Shefler has seen countless teenagers apply to highly selective schools where they have no hope of attending. Families should ask outside experts to critique their students' talent.

3. Look for joint auditions. Going to auditions can be expensive, which is why some schools in the art fields hold joint auditions.

Some schools that offer a bachelor of fine arts program in theatre get together every year to hold a "National Unified Audition." In 2011, the audition will be held on different dates in February in New York, Chicago, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles.

For visual art and design majors, there is "National Portfolio Day." Representatives of schools will review artwork and offer feedback for the students who attend.

4. Consider traditional universities or colleges. For lots of students, art schools and conservatories are going to be unaffordable. Many of these institutions are expensive and yet the financial aid students receive is often modest compared to traditional colleges and universities that offer a broader array of majors.

The Savannah College of Art and Design, for instance, only meets 20 percent of the typical student's financial need, according to College Board statistics. This is a school costs more than $41,000. The New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, where tuition with room and board costs $47,050, typically covers 59 percent of a student's financial need. The Boston Conservatory meets an average of 40 percent of a student's need. In contrast, many elite colleges meet all or nearly all of students' financial need.

5. Be prepared for the audition. When you are at an audition, don't wear a T-shirt and jeans. You should also not wear anything that would draw attention away from your performance. You don't need to buy a suit, but consider choosing an outfit that you would wear on a first date, Shefler suggests.

You should also perform appropriate material during an audition. A 17-year-old, for instance, shouldn't perform a piece that requires her to pretend to be a middle-aged woman.

6. Parents, take a chill pill. In this time of high unemployment, more parents than ever seem to be hoping that their children major in something practical like business or engineering. But art majors end up with many desirable skills such as being able to present in front of a group, taking constructive criticism, and being equipped with excellent speaking skills. Remember, what's most important is that students graduate with a degree!

Written by Lynn O'Shaughnessy for U.S. News & World Report
Posted by Lindy Kahn, M.A., CEP for Kahn Educational Group, LLC

Study Finds Teens' Late Night Media Use Comes at a Price

Staying up late to play video games, surf the Internet and send phone text messages may lead to learning problems, mood swings, anxiety and depression in children, a pilot study suggests.

The research, conducted at the Sleep Disorders Center at JFK Medical Center in Edison, N.J., found that children who snuck time on their cell phones, computers and other electronic devices after supposedly going to sleep had a greater chance of sleep disorders that cause other difficulties.

"These activities are not sleep-promoting, like reading a novel or listening to music. They stimulate the brain and depress normal sleep cycles," said study author Dr. Peter G. Polos.

His team was scheduled to present the findings Monday at the American College of Chest Physicians annual meeting in Vancouver.

The study was based on a survey of 40 boys and girls with an average age of 14. The researchers focused on their activities after they had gone into their bedroom for the night and were supposed to be sleeping.

Participants reported an average of 34 texts per night after bedtime, and an average of 3,400 night-time texts per month. These texts occurred from 10 minutes to four hours after going to bed. The average participant was awoken once a night by a text.

Girls were more "text happy," while boys were more likely to stay awake playing video games, said Polos, a physician at the hospital and a clinical instructor at its Sleep Disorders Center. All of the participants had gone to the center for help with sleep problems.

The research found correlations between late-night electronic media use and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, mood swings, anxiety, depression and poor cognitive functioning (thinking skills) during the day.

About half of the parents of study participants didn't know what the kids were up to, said Polos. The others knew, but had a fatalistic attitude.

"They [parents] thought, 'This is the world we live in, what can you do?'" said Polos. But parents need to monitor electronic media use, he said, because "at the end of the day, the parent is still the parent, the child is still the child."

Polos said doctors need to start asking children and teens routinely about night-time media use and talk to the child, along with the parents, about the negative consequences of poor sleep.

Calling America a "sleep-deprived culture," Polos noted that teens get little enough sleep "with sports, homework and getting up early for school." Late-night media use "really isn't helping," he said.

Expert Richard Gallagher said another reason parents need to monitor media use is to know what is going on in their children's lives.

"Parents need to take the perspective of what their own lives were like growing up," said Gallagher, director of the Parenting Institute at the Child Study Center at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City.

Parents used to know who their children were talking to on the phone or hanging out with because it was all done in the real world when families typically had one or two phones, he noted.

"Parents knew if someone came to the door to see their daughter or son," said Gallagher, an associate professor of adolescent psychiatry at New York University, adding that "children should have some privacy, but parents need to make it more comparable to when they were growing up."

Parents need to set rules such as no computers in the child's bedroom, no phone calls during mealtimes, and establish a phone use curfew.

"Then have the kids turn over the phones," said Gallagher.

Gallagher also noted that the effect of media can be good for some children who have "more contact with others than they might normally have had" as a result. But parents also need to be aware that all the messages sent back and forth "aren't necessarily friendly, or about things they want their kids to constantly think about," he said.

Because many kids are messaging or texting throughout the day, "there is no break from any kind of drama," or peer-related problems their children might be having, said Gallagher.

Both experts said the long-term effects of children's constant use of technology is unknown and needs more study. Also, they both emphasized the need for parents to talk with their children, and start early.

Citing the example of a parent who resorted to turning off the router at night, Polos said it's important to get a jump on things before it becomes a big problem.

"By then, the horse is out of the barn," said Polos, when parents delay getting involved.

Written by Ellin Holohan for HealthDay News
Posted by Lindy Kahn, M.A., CEP for Kahn Educational Group, LLC