Y'know how everyone is a perfect parent ... until they actually are a parent? When we were "dinks" (dual-income, no kids), my husband and I found it very easy to pass judgement on our friends who had already taken the parental plunge. We would never let our toddler eat junk food between meals. We would never be bullied into anything by a six-year old. We would never let our fifth grader wear something like that to school.
We would never let our teenager have unlimited access to iPhone apps.
Actually, that last one wasn't on our mind at all. Our friends who had children five and ten years before us didn't face the same challenges we do where personal electronics are concerned. Sure they had PCs, but the whole smartphone thing is a fairly new phenomenon. And one that makes it fairly difficult (read, impossible) to assert any kind of authority or control.
There was a time (not so long ago) when I was feeling rather self-satisfied that my teen daughter and I were Facebook friends. Let me tell you ... Facebook is so yesterday! Sure, my daughter is still on Facebook (you sort of have to be), but her activity there is fairly superficial: sharing photos from horse events, wishing people "Happy Birthday." Her real life (well, her real digital life) takes place elsewhere.
Here are some of the latest apps that have replaced Facebook in terms of teen activity. If you don't know them, don't worry, your kids do.
Oh wait, strike that. If you don't know them, your kids do. Go ahead and worry.
Snapchat
Kids can post pictures that then "disappear." In theory, this makes the app safer than a more permanent place like Facebook. In reality, it encourages otherwise cautious kids to experiment with sexting and bullying. And, guess what? Nothing on the Internet ever really goes away.
Burn Note
This one's the same premise as Snapchat but with text messages instead of pictures. Same benefits. Same issues.
Kik
A popular messaging app with 120 million (MILLION!) users, Kik "lets you connect with all your friends, no matter how you meet them – at school, on your favorite social app, or in an online game." Your username can be whatever you like, which encourages anonymity (and all the questionable behavior that tags along with it). Since no one knows who you really are, it's a great place for pedophiles. Bonus!
Ask.fm
Another anonymous site (do we see a pattern emerging?), Ask.fm lets users post questions and answers. Great for sharing information, right? Great also for bullying, unfortunately. Although the site is based in Latvia, it's very popular with teens in the U.K. And, sadly, there have been several suicides there linked to it.
Yik Yak
Another anonymous site (yes, definitely a pattern), Yik Yak is in some ways even worse because it geotargets users. You see comments posted by people in your own community — in most cases, your high school. This "local bulletin board" brings the bullying right into your backyard.
I've just scratched the surface here. There are so many others (and, sadly, more being developed every day). Vine, Wanelo, Oovoo, Tumblr, Omegle, Pheed, Instagram, Whisper, Speak Freely, the list goes on and on.
If you have the wherewithal, ask your daughter or son to give you a tour of their smartphone. Then again, if they know you're coming, they can easily hide any apps they don't want you to see. In fact, there's an app for that. It's called ...
Poof.
If you enjoyed this post, I invite you to order a copy of my new book Lovin' the Alien at www.lovinthealien.com.
This past weekend, we went down to New York with another family: a dad, a mom and two teenage girls.
The dad has been my husband's best friend since they were in sixth grade or so. The mom is also a good friend, who won me over early on. She came to a New Year's Eve party and met her then boyfriend's (now husband's) friends for the first time. When she excused herself to go to the powder room, she said "Okay, you can all talk about me now."
After so many years, I feel as though the two girls are an extra set of nieces. One is about a year and a half older than my daughter. The other, about six months younger. With the oldest of the three girls graduating in just a couple of months, we figured this might be their last trip together.
The weekend was a success by anyone's measure. We walked all over Manhattan, had fantastic food, saw a wonderful Broadway show. Rather than reserve multiple hotel rooms, we rented a two-bedroom apartment on the Upper Westside. Each adult couple had their own room. The three girls crashed together on fold-out couches in the combination living/dining room.
An important proviso as we looked for and found a place was — of course — WiFi. I didn't actually stop and count, but between the seven of us, we had six smart phones and at least four laptops. When we weren't seeing the sights or painting the town red, the girls were online. In fact, even when we were, in theory, seeing and painting, the girls were online. It was not uncommon to see one or two or all three of them texting while we walked down the street.
I'd like to think that they were narrating a travelogue of sorts, that they were keeping their less fortunate friends abreast of their adventures.
Yeah, right.
Did they write about the High Line or Chelsea Markets? Greenwich Village or the 9/11 Memorial?
Um, probably not.
Did they tell their BFFs back home about the rat sightings in the subways (two of them, I'm sorry to report)? Did they take and share pictures of Central Park's Great Lawn, the Delacorte Theatre, Belvedere Castle, Bethesda Fountain, the Mall or the Carousel?
I doubt it.
Did they talk about Fifth Avenue's annual Easter Bonnet Parade? Or meeting the lead actor in a hit new musical? Or seeing the real Times Square ball? Any of the important stuff we did?
Unlikely.
Truth is, most of the texts I've encountered over the past few years have been strikingly unimportant. Sure, there's the occasional homework question or "whose-mom-can-pick-us-up-after-the-movie" logistic. But, most of the time, texts seem fairly random, quite succinct, and abysmally misspelled.
Granted, I'm not the target audience.
Nevertheless, it seemed a shame to me that any of the girls would miss even a single shop window, architectural element or colorful character. I would also have liked to hear them talk more amongst themselves. Then again, they certainly yucked it up each evening after the parents went to bed.
And, who knows, maybe some of the texts they were texting were being texted to each other.
It could happen.
If you enjoyed this post, I invite you to order a copy of my new book Lovin' the Alien at www.lovinthealien.com.
I'm always on the lookout for Lovin' the Alien story ideas. So, I've set up alerts to notify me when news items include the word "teen."
Sometimes there are lots of stories; sometimes none. Sometimes they're relevant; sometimes not.
This morning was a doozy.
Apparently, as reported in more than 80 stories on Google news, some 100 teens have been implicated in a sexting operation in Virgina. Actually, I don't think "operation" is really the right word. It's more like a movement, a wave or phenomenon. As far as I can tell, there wasn't any money being made. It was all just kids being kids — albeit naked kids being naked kids on the Internet, naked. (Did I mention they were naked?) The girls involved ranged from 14 to 17 years of age and, according to the police, all of the pictures ("although explicit") appeared to be consensual.
For the record, posting naked pictures of underage girls is considered distribution of child pornography. Just saying.
The police are actually being pretty cool. They are working to get to the bottom of all this but they aren't pressing charges. Still, it's worrisome that the "consensual" event was as complex as it was — with an organized website containing 1,000 nude photos and with participants spanning 6 Virginia counties.
Here's where it gets interesting. Teens aren't the only ones who can't resist social media. Virtually every story about this event generated a rash of reader comments. Before the opinions devolved into accusations against the NSA and conspiracy theories about living in a police state, most were from outraged citizens who blamed ... the parents.
Here are some choice words for those of us who chose to reproduce:
Sickening. Where are the parents?
Parents, you have no one to blame but yourselves.
Teens doing stupid things is the domain of parents not police.
Clearly the parents weren't paying attention.
Parental Involvement Deficit Disorder?
Oh lord, parents watch your kids and be alert.
It seems to me the problem is in this world of latchkey kids, the parents are unaware of what their kids are up to.
This is a perfect example of the kind of parenting that goes on in this society.
We're going to have to agree to disagree. I would also wager that most of these vocal — and, oy vey, so judgmental — commentators are not parents themselves. They underestimate the challenges of raising a teen in the digital world. By about a million miles.
Did these kids do something stupid? Yes, obviously. Did we do stupid things when we were teenagers too?
Yes, obviously.
I have a teenage daughter who has access to pretty much every digital device and channel currently available. She has an iPhone; we have an iPad. She has multiple digital cameras. She has a laptop (at any given time there are at least three and sometimes four of them in the house). We have a digital DVD player that enables Internet access through our widescreen TV. Really. (Cool, huh?)
I'm not listing all of this to brag about how fortunate we are (very) or how much we spend on electronics (a lot). But to point out that it would be pretty much impossible to lock and password protect every piece of equipment. Even if we did choose to live "off the grid," she could get online at school, at the library or at a friend's house.
My daughter is careful about what she posts, but she's certainly come across inappropriate pictures, not to mention language. I'm actually not too concerned about her own online behavior. If I was, I would certainly be more vigilant. But, even then, I couldn't police her every movement.
The parents had their heads in the sand.
No, my friend, they probably didn't. They were probably juggling a full-time job with running a household and parenting a high schooler. They were probably immersed in helping with homework, driving to games, paying bills, putting food on the table. Sexting is something to worry about, of course. But, it isn't the only thing.
Most of us are wide awake and doing the best we can.
Maybe you're the one who needs to open your eyes before you open your mouth.
If you enjoyed this post, I invite you to order a copy of my new book Lovin' the Alien at www.lovinthealien.com.
