I haven't been a teenager for a while, but even so I still remember wanting my autonomy from my parents when it came to how I used a computer or my cell phone. It's hard because teens want freedom from their parents, but they aren't old enough to be adults. Cell phones and computers have also become integrated with school, which has complicated how parents can monitor their children's media usage.
I started visiting parenting websites and other reports to come up with a solution for my presentation. I looked up more than just how to monitor teen's digital media use, I looked up how to build trust between parents and teenagers. A lot of what was recommended was for parents to set up clear boundaries, and not to enforce rules sometimes and not others or only when parents feel like it so that teens understand what's expected. It was also recommended that teens be involved in the rule-making process; and that when they are involved not only are they more apt to follow the rules, but that teens have more success in other areas of their life too because they learn how to deal with rules and regulations and how to follow them and succeed.
This is the approach my parents took. They set up the rules, but if I felt like a rule was unfair or I felt like it was being unjustly enforced I could have a discussion about it and we would come up with a solution. That doesn't mean that just because I didn't like a rule or thought it was unfair my parents did away with it, but I did feel like my parents valued my opinion and it gave me ownership over those rules.
This last part was missing from my presentation. I know I wanted to cover it, but now I have a much better idea in how to present it.
While I looked at many, many websites (and lots of them gave similar advice), this is the best one I found:
http://teenbrain.drugfree.org/tools/underconstruction/boundaries.html
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