Tech&Society: “How To Be a Good Digital Parent”
Aspen Institute España and Fundación Telefónica held a new session of the Tech & Society Program 2019 on “How To Be a Good Digital Parent” with Stephen Balkam, founder and director of Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI) and Noelia Amoedo, CEO of Mediamart Mobile, moderator of the debate with the assistants.
The digital environment arouses a logic concern among parents with sons and daughters of all ages. Overexposure of children to screens, not being mature enough to anticipate the dangers or understand the consequences, generate a multitude of questions: What guidelines should be followed by parents in the digital education of their children? What aspects should be paid more attention to? How to help establish a positive and enriching relationship between our children and digital technologies?
Biographies
Stephen Balkam has had a wide range of leadership roles in the nonprofit sector in the both the US and UK for the past 30 years. He is the Founder and CEO of the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI), an international, nonprofit organization headquartered in Washington, DC. FOSI’s mission is to create a “culture of responsibility,” in the online world to make the online world safer for kids and their families. Previously, Stephen was the Founder and CEO of the Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA), and served on the US Child Online Protection Commission (COPA); in 2001 he was named one of the Top 50 UK Movers and Shakers by Internet magazine. Stephen is a member of the Safety Advisory Board at Facebook as well as the social media app, Skout. For his efforts in online safety, Stephen was given the 1998 Carl Bertelsmann Prize in Gutersloh, Germany, for innovation and responsibility in the information society and was invited to the first and subsequent White House Internet Summits during the Clinton Administration. A native of Washington, DC, Stephen spent many years in the UK. He earned a BA, magna cum laude, in psychology from University College, Cardiff, Wales in 1977. He writes regularly for the Huffington Post, is a LinkedIn Influencer, has appeared on nationally syndicated TV and radio programs such as MSNBC, CNN, NPR and the BBC and has been interviewed by leading media outlets such as the Washington Post, New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. He has given presentations and spoken in17 countries on 4 continents.
Noelia Amoedo is currently the CEO of Mediasmart Mobile, a technology company in the field of mobile advertising. She is an expert in managing businesses based on mobile technologies, having worked in the industry since 2000. She has gained deep knowledge of the industry across the value chain thanks to her direct experience with multiple business models in more than a dozen international markets. Noelia has taken several executive roles in the past few years, including VP of marketing and business development for webOS in EMEA at Palm – HP’s subsidiary, VP of Mobile at the social network hi5, back when social networks were starting to succeed, and multiple senior positions with the mobile value added service provider Buongiorno, the last one of which was Managing Director of Buongiorno USA. Prior to her life on mobile, Noelia also worked at iPIN Transaction Systems in San Francisco back in 1999, where she first got acquainted with an internet based business. Noelia has a Bachelor’s Degree in Physics (major in optical communications) by Santiago de Compostela University, and a Master in Electrical Engineering by Stanford University, where she was a Fulbright Scholar.
Third edition of the Tech & Society Program
This program, co-organized with Fundación Telefónica, aims to establish a forum for reflection on the issues raised by advances in digital technology and its influence in areas as diverse as human relations, politics, education, the economy or medicine. In each session, an expert on all those areas exhibits his own point of view on how digital technology is influencing our lives.
