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Social Stupidity

It seems like a new social networking platform comes along about every five minutes.  Kids move from one platform to another with astonishing speed.  Just a few years ago, only a few teens used Twitter, but recently youth have been tweeting in rapidly increasing numbers.

Like other social networking applications, Twitter has privacy settings that allow users some modicum of control over who sees their tweets.  However, many teens are either not aware of the settings or not taking the time to use them.  A recent investigation by Salt Lake City’s Deseret News looked at Twitter accounts apparently held by middle school students.  While there was the expected chatter about typical teen topics, the reporters also found tweets about drugs and other dangerous topics.  One set of tweets chronicled several teens’ attempts to set up a time to smoke marijuana before school.  Careless tweets led to three arrests.

Like other social networks, Twitter can give users the sense that they are carrying on private conversations with friends while they are, in reality, broadcasting to the world.  The same things happened in the early days of MySpace and Facebook, before news stories started to raise awareness of privacy settings.

Safety advocates often talk about anything you post being permanently online.  With Twitter we can go one step farther. The US Library of Congress is archiving every public tweet since Twitter’s inception in 2006.

Kids do want to control who sees their posts, when, and how.  They’re not blind to privacy, though they may have a different conception of it than adults do.

Speaking of adults, a story in the Washington Times reminds us that grown ups are not necessarily any smarter about our digital lives.  The FBI has been trying to deal with a “rash of sexting cases” among its agents using government-issued smart phones to send each other suggestive texts and pictures of themselves “in a state of undress.”   Kids aren’t the only ones in need of education!

This might be a good time to sit down with you child and go over their privacy settings in each of the social networking platforms or digital devices they use.  If they’re not familiar with the process, help them find and configure the settings.  If you’re not up on privacy options, have your kids walk you through the set up.  You’ll both learn a thing or two and may have the chance for an interesting conversation about privacy.


Frank Gallagher is Executive Director of Cable in the Classroom (CIC), the education foundation of the cable telecommunications industry. He is a specialist in media and information literacy, internet safety, digital citizenship, and the impact of media on children and is a former middle school math teacher. Image Credit: PictureYouth.

 

 

Categories: Social Networking

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