Create a Cyber-Safe Environment for Your Tweens

When you applied for your first job or to college, it was simple. Type answers to simple questions on a typewriter, into the photocopied application. Pay for your scores to be sent to the college. Request letters of reference and recommendations sent with your application. Hand it in.

The Admissions officer’s or prospective employer’s job was a bit more difficult. He had to assess the answers you offered, read your essay, judge your letters of recommendation. Perhaps call your references. He had to do all of that before a decision was made.

Now? Now its much more simple. Now the first step to analyzing an application doesn’t include any reading or any phone calls. Now it includes a simple search. Googling an applicant’s name.

Try it. Google your own name. Google your son’s name. Study it. What do those first 10 listings represent? Your home page. Truly. A search on Google is now a person’s home page on the web.

Do you see a Facebook link? MySpace? An article from the local paper about last week’s inspirational touchdown your son scored? This is the same thing the admissions counselor or employer sees when he Googles your child’s name.

Can you click through and view the listing? Is the Facebook page hidden with privacy settings or open for viewers? Can you read your child’s status updates? So can the other readers. And would your child accept a stranger as a friend? Mine would.

Parents, please. Take the time to check what your child is sharing with the public. Express your concerns over not only his status on twitter last night, but over the responses his friend had. Explain that what is out in cyber space stays in cyber space.  It doesn’t go away. Its there. Forever. Modern technology has created biographies and memoirs of everyone. It allows for information sharing just was well as information availability. No one is a closed book anymore. We’re all searchable.

And that mistake your daughter made? The one she shared with her 287 best friends on Facebook? That mistake isn’t going anywhere. Its still listed in her twitter stream and can be read in her blog. She’s sharing herself with anyone who wants to listen.

There’s no taking back the mistake of forgetting to brush your teeth. And there’s no way to erase a defamatory comment about a peer. Its there. Its there to stay. You can’t put the toothpaste back into the tube. And you can’t erase the information you shared late last Thursday night in an online forum.

Parents, sit down with your children. Lead them in learning that there are consequences to all actions. Privacy is a privilege to be grasped and contained.

© 2010, Julie Meyers Pron. All rights reserved.

About Julie Meyers Pron

Julie Meyers Pron has written 813 post in this blog.

mom of 3 and wife, Julie is a former elementary school teacher and a Public Relations manager. She is the owner/editor of Just Precious, founding partner of Just Centsible, and a team member of Splash Creative Media. Julie is a PTOer, volunteer, elementary educator and that's just the beginning of the list!

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Tagged as: bitmoms, choices, consequences, Facebook, Google, Online Communities, Social Media, Social Networking, Technology, teens, tweens, Twitter