Tweens Need Sleep!

A study released today by the non-profit National Sleep Foundation finds that:

• "1 in 10 kids are being awoken by texts after they have gone to bed." (for the latest stats on tweens and mobile phones, see our post here)
• "Kids today are getting an hour and a half to two hours less sleep per night than they did a century ago. That means that they are losing about 50 hours of sleep per month."
• "Sleep experts recommend that teenagers get 9 hours and 15 minutes of sleep a night but adolescents in the study were only averaging 7 hours and 26 minutes on weeknights."

Dr. Charles Czeisler, of Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, commented on the report and said, "I am the most concerned about how little sleep 13-18 years are getting."

Sleep experts recommend turning off electronics well before bedtime because exposure to the artificial light (of electronics) before going to bed "can increase alertness and suppress the release of melatonin, a sleep-promoting hormone." Dr. Czeisler says, "Parents should get these technologies out of the bedrooms of kids if they want them to do well (in school)."

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Glee's Amber Riley Wants You to "Save the Music" in Schools

March is "Music in our Schools" month, and all kinds of organizations (VH1, the National Association for Music Education, and DoSomething.Org to name a few) are working to activate students across the U.S. to raise awareness about this issue and prevent losing their school's music education programs. The Battle for the Bands campaign is a big part of this campaign, and this year, Glee's Amber Riley is lending her voice to the effort (last year, Nick Jonas was a spokesperson for the campaign).



The VH1 Save The Music Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to restoring instrumental music education in America's public schools, and raising awareness about the importance of music as part of each child's complete education. To date, the Foundation has provided more than $47 million in new musical instruments to 1,750 public schools in more than 100 cities around the country, impacting the lives of over 1.6 million children.
Learn how you can get involved here.

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Willow Smith Wins NAACP Image Award For Outstanding New Artist

Willow Smith has just been awarded the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding New Artist. She beat out Bruno Mars, Jason Derulo and BoB for this award, which was no small feat. Her hit single "Whip Your Hair" has been a breakout hit and the basis for the award.

Tellingly, Ms. Smith was not able to accept her award in person because she is touring with Justin Bieber.



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Tween Chess Phenom Dares You To Be Different

Twelve year-old Justus Williams is an internationally-ranked chess player and the youngest ever African-American chess master. He calls himself "the LeBron James of chess", and his record proves it - is ranked fourth in the world in his age group.

Mr. Williams only started playing chess in third grade but has earned the title "chess master" in just four years. He attends school in the Bronx at I.S. 318, and his chess skills have taken all over the world to compete (to Brazil, Greece and Canada at last count).



Mr. Williams and his family have started a campaign called "Dare to be Different" to encourage other tweens to try their hand at sports and activities that are "off the beaten path". He serves as a positive role model for others to try out something new - something that is a bit different from what everyone else seems to be doing. We think this is a fantastic idea.

Does your tween do an unusual sport or activity? If so, what does she do? How did she get started? Please share your experience below!

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Online Safety for Tweens

Teaching tweens how to be safe online is an ongoing conversation in our house. Our tweens want to go online to look at websites, connect with their friends and family via our family's Facebook page, and check out funny videos on YouTube. And increasingly they need to go online to do research for school projects and turn in assignments via their school's intranet. We've also recently heard about a computer virus on Facebook that targets fans of Justin Bieber through a tactic known as "clickjacking" (our recent Justin Bieber contest is NOT part of that scheme).

We had the chance to chat today with the Children's Advertising Review Unit, a self-regulatory body that monitors websites and blogs to make sure that advertising to kids and the collection of information meet the of COPPA (the Children's Online Privacy and Protection Act), and earlier this week we interviewed the CEO of Imbee, a new online social network for tweens (we'll post that interview later). Both conversations focused on the growing trend of tweens needing to and wanting to interact more online. (BTW, this blog does NOT collect personally identifiable information, and we have a strict editorial policy - there is no pay to play on MsTwixt.com)

With tweens going online in record numbers (see our report of the latest stats on tweens online), we thought it'd be helpful to post some of the tips we've gathered:

• NEVER post personally identifiable information online. This includes your first and last name, birthdate, address and phone number. Our own tweens use their nicknames for their email addresses to make sure that both their first and last names are not used together.
• Our compromise with Facebook as been to create a family page that both our tweens and we have access to. Facebook's stated policy is that one must be over 13 years old to have an account, but this is easily worked around as there is no verification (did you know that 28% of tweens who are online are on Facebook?).
• We've prevented auto photo tagging on Facebook - see our instructions here.
• We've set strict privacy settings on our family's Facebook profile - our guidelines for these are here.
• We've set our browser settings to a "high" security level to prevent downloads without express consent.
• We've set our Google search settings to "safe search" to help screen out inappropriate search results.
• Computers are not permitted in bedrooms; our tweens can only go online while sitting in common rooms of our house. Although we're well aware that this is impossible to monitor outside the home, we are very clear with our family's expectations on this matter.
• We monitor the online visibility of our tweens by regularly "Googling" them - that way we can keep on eye on information others can see about them.

We're taken the position that rather than prohibit our tweens from going online, we're teaching them what to stay away from online. The Internet can be a great resource - our challenge is to help them get the most out of it.

What other tips does your family have to keep your tween safe online? Please share your comments below.

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A Justin Bieber Birthday Gift For Your Tween

We've had a tremendous response to our post on a Justin Bieber/"Never Say Never" themed-birthday party, and we appreciate everyone's comments and emails!

To thank our readers, we thought we'd share the love and give you a little something to celebrate the Bieb's birthday in style:  we're giving away a pair of limited edition purple Justin Bieber 3D glasses! (We purchased several of these for our youngest tween's birthday and it turns out that we overestimated by one pair - our  error is your gain.) They are brand new and in their original packaging.

To win these cool purple shades, all you need to do is post a comment below about how you and/or your tween marked Mr. Bieber's birthday yesterday (our tween's report is here).  We'll need your email address as well, so send it to us at mstwixt@gmail.com (we NEVER sell or lease your information, and if you are a tween, please have your grown-up send us their email address).

We'll draw one lucky tween's name from the list of comments on Saturday, March 5th. Happy posting!

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A Tween's Report: How Our School Celebrated Justin Bieber's Birthday

Even we were a little surprised by how wide-spread celebrations for the tween idol's birthday were today. Here is our tween's report on what happened in her school today:

"Today in my grade everyone was doing one of the following:

• Screaming
• Singing JB songs, or 
• Covered in purple

There were pictures of him everywhere in the school. And at the end of the day, my class sang "Happy Birthday" to Justin Bieber. Two people even brought in brownies and cupcakes that spelled "Happy B-Day Justin Bieber."

There was not one class in which his name was not mentioned, and no one talked about ANYTHING else but him. There was even a touch or two of gossip and girl-talk that had to do with JB.

Girls in my school were:

• Singing him Happy Birthday in the lunchroom,
• Wearing purple-purple hoodies, and
• Posting messages on our announcement board with hilarious clip-art pictures."

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What's Cool for Tweens in March: MsTwixt's Calendar

Ms Twixt's Calendar

• Mar 1 Justin Bieber's 17th birthday!
• Mar 1 Sprinkles Cupcakes pre-opening party in D.C.!
• Mar 1 Daniella Monet's (from Victorious) birthday!
• Mar 1 National Pancake Day
• Mar 1 National Peanut Butter Day
• Mar 1 "Race to Nowhere" screening at Washington Hebrew
• Mar 1 Ron Weasley's birthday!
• Mar 2 Dr. Seuss' birthday!
• Mar 3 M&M's birthday!
• Mar 4 "Beastly" starring Vanessa Hudgens & Alex Pettyfer opens
• Mar 6 Allstar Weekend plays in Baltimore
• Mar 8 "Race to Nowhere" screening at Avalon Theatre
• Mar 8 International Women's Day
• Mar 9 Barbie's birthday
• Mar 10 Emily Osment's birthday!
• Mar 11 "Mars Needs Moms" opens
• Mar 12 Girl Scout Day
• Mar 17 Mia Hamm's birthday!
• Mar 19 National Chocolate Caramel Day
• Mar 24 National Raisinette Day
• Mar 25 "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" movie opens
• Mar 26-Apr 10 National Cherry Blossom Festival
• Mar 27 Brenda Song's birthday
• Mar 27 National Cherry Blossom Kite Festival
• Mar 27 830pm is Earth Hour
• Mar 28 Lady Gaga's birthday
• Mar 31 "Scorpia Rising" (the last Alex Rider book) released

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A Justin Bieber Birthday Party for Tweens

Justin Bieber's 17th birthday is today, March 1st, but our youngest tween's (age 8) birthday was this past weekend and she celebrated with a Bieber birthday party. The girls had so much fun that we thought we'd share how we put together this birthday extravaganza:

We took the group to see "Never Say Never, the Director's Cut" and made sure the tweens were properly outfitted for the show with special Bieberized purple 3D glasses and purple glow sticks. Pre-party prep included getting ready with purple rock star hair and Bieber Silly Bandz.

At the movies, the girls took over the last row of the theater and rocked out to the show. They had a blast and a few left converted as true "Beliebers".

After the show they had a sleepover and made their own bedazzled "varsity" tops inspired by the "Never Say Never" movie poster - here's how:

We used sheets of sticker-backed felt and printed out 8-inch high varsity letters; then
We traced the letters onto the felt and cut them out.

Then we outlined each letter using a silver Sharpie pen, and glued on differing sizes of silver rhinestones. Then we affixed them onto a (purple, of course) tank top.

The girls flipped over their custom tops!

We also found this amazing party planning site, The Party Animal, with fantastic ideas for planning a Justin Bieber bash - enjoy!

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First Tween Sasha Obama and Nick Jonas at Motown Tribute

The White House hosted a night of Motown music in honor of Black History Month last night, and First Tween Sasha Obama helped to dance the night away. Video from ABC News is below:




Stars who performed tributes to Motown greats included Nick Jonas (himself no stranger to the Obamas), Natasha Bedingfield, Sheryl Crow, Jordin Sparks, John Legend, and Amber Riley and Matt Salling from the cast of Glee. The President took a great deal of ribbing about his own stiff dance style from emcee Jamie Foxx, but he took it good-naturedly and danced with young Ms. Obama on the stage during "Dancing in the Streets."

As part of the First Lady's new initiative, "The Sound of Young America", Michelle Obama invited 100 local students in Washington to attend an educational workshop at the White House on the history of Motown. You can watch that video here.

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