Grasshopper New Media Presents...

Why is it that kids are embarrassed by their parents’ very existence, but they don’t even cringe at posting photos of themselves on Facebook doing what I call “Stupid Teen Tricks”? Like car surfing. Throwing up after too much drinking. Lifting their shirts at a bar.

A friend of mine took me to her daughter’s Facebook page recently. She wanted to show me a picture of her daughter wearing a costume as part of a school science project. When I saw her daughter in person a few days later, I commented on the picture, to which she replied, horrified, “You were on my Facebook page?”

I saw that I had stupendously put my foot in my mouth (I guess that’s why God gave me size 6 feet…). I didn’t know that she didn’t know that her mom had access to her Facebook profile. She was upset because out of the 39 million members on Facebook, she only wanted her 300 closest friends to see her 120 pictures that she uploaded on her profile pages. But for me, a family friend, the page is off limits. Does that make sense to you?

I’ve listened to kids say that they’d be mad as hell if their parents suddenly showed up in their online space. It’s a violation of privacy, I hear kids say. But how can someone who has 300 “friends” think that anything they say, post or stream online is private? And when I ask these same kids if they care that someone can grab their picture from Facebook and put it in a video – which I just saw last week at a speaking engagement to a high school – these kids say, “Nope. That doesn’t bother me.”

What about potential college admissions staff seeing it? Future employers? “Only if it costs me a spot,” kids say. Adults even tell me, “Well, we did things like that, too; it’s just that we had the good sense not to flaunt it.”

That’s exactly my point, and it’s exactly what my friends in college admissions and human resources are telling me. It’s about good judgment – or more accurately, the lack of it. It is not necessarily what these kids are doing in their posted pictures (unless it’s illegal, immoral or unethical) it’s that they think nothing of posting it where the public can view it. You want the guy you saw hugging the “porcelain god” talking to your biggest client? You want the girl you saw baring her midriff and more attending your college honors program when there are 1000 other high school seniors who also want to get in and who haven’t posted their Stupid Teen Tricks?

The thing is, these kids get it. They just don’t care. Not until it affects them personally.

And by then it may be too late. And all it might have taken was a real conversation.

That’s where parents come in. We may not have the technological experience of our teenagers, but we have life experience. We can anticipate likely outcomes. We’ve learned from our mistakes as well as those of our friends, our friends’ friends and our friends’ kids. It is our job to help guide our teenage sons and daughters … to help them navigate the online world if not technologically, then with regard to safety, privacy and just plain street smarts.

In a recent survey of 200 Facebook users, 41 per cent gave out personal information including address, phone number and date of birth, because they agreed to “friend” a complete stranger. (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/14/facebook_user_survey/) One user even gave his mother’s maiden name. If you have a teenager at home, ask him or her right now: why shouldn’t you tell someone your mother’s maiden name? As adults, we know this is data used for credit card access. But do our kids know this? They may think they are world-wise, but the truth is, their worldliness is limited by their age and experience; as adults, we have much to teach them, if we can just hang in there past the eye rolling and monosyllabic responses.

Whether teens like it or not, Facebook and other social networking sites are public. Not everything you’d share in the privacy of your own home should be posted to the public. And the reverse is true; nothing you wouldn’t share with a stranger should be posted online either. Why? How about identity theft? Cyberpredators? Stealing passwords? Do kids think ahead like these? Are you kidding? Looking before you leap has never been a strength of adolescents – it’s part of the way their brains are wired. But we adults know what can happen. We know what has happened. It is up to us to keep our kids from divulging their name, address, school, phone numbers, friends’ names and any other personal information. Hey, just because we’re paranoid for our kids doesn’t mean that people aren’t after them, if you know what I mean.

by Ginger Emas

[tags]parents, kids, children, relationships, moms, dads, school, social, embarrassment, Facebook, social networking, respect[/tags]
Photo graciously provided by corydalus, through a Creative Commons license, some rights reserved