Teenagers Staying Connected with Technology
photo credit: crimsong19
These days everyone wants to stay connected with their friends, families, and acquaintances. It is easier than ever to do this with social media sites. Social media sites are user friendly at least for the tech saavy and make life even a bit easier. Adolescents are known for their need to be connected and in the know about whatever may affect their social status. It seems that social media may have been made for the average social teenager.
There are multiple sites for connecting with others and keeping up on the latest news. Virtually whatever one has an interest in they can find a social media site for that. All one would have to do is Google an interest for example and find if there is a social media site for that interest. If there was not one, one could start one up and have people connecting over this topic.
Facebook is one that many teenagers use on a daily basis. Facebook was originally made for a college educated background ( as you had to have a college e-mail to become a member, this was only a few years ago) but has changed so that everyone.. teenage to senior citizen can join and find friends, classmates, friends they have lost touch with, acquaintances, and people from other activities one might partake in. There are risks to being on Facebook if one does not use the privacy settings. One could write a status about how they hate their job and that their boss is mean (or even worse). If the person allows everyone to find their profile and see their status they might be in trouble at work or fired for such talk. The privacy settings allow users to lock their statuses from people they do not know, lock their pictures, and even lock their profile from online predators.
Myspace is another social network site that allows users to find friends, acquaintances, bands, comedians, actors that a teen may like. Myspace does not offer the same security settings as facebook. Although one can decide what pieces of their profile they want strangers to see. Myspace and facebook may have inappropriate content that a teenager should not have to see or hear. This is a thought to keep in mind as a parent and to ultimately decide if you want your teenager to have such an account.
Twitter is another site that once again allows people to find friends, family, acquaintances, and whoever else they want to find. Virtually everyone has either a facebook, myspace, or twitter, or even all of the above. Twitter allows people to state what is going on in their life. Friends can comment on their friends status by writing “@” them. Once again there may be inappropriate topics of discussions on this site. Ultimately whether a teenager joins a social networking site is both up to the parent and the teenager. A discussion of safety concerns should be broached with the teenager and supervision would be key for the parents.
More Parenting Help and Tips
The bottom line is that if parents REALLY want to keep their kids safe online, they need to know what said kids are doing on the computer, and what is happening in their online lives. Blocks and filters are easy to get around, and talking alone will get you nowhere… (if you think your kids are going to tell you, honestly, everything they are doing online – you are a fool). Education is a great thing, and very necessary, but how can you consider yourself educated if you don’t know the simplest information – like what your kids are really doing. If you have monitoring software, like our PC Pandora (http://www.pcpandora.com), you will know everything they do and will be able to talk to them about it. If you aren’t monitoring and don’t know what they are really doing, how can you be sure they are safe? It’s not an issue of privacy (I have no idea where and when kids were granted endless privacy because they exist – in my day privacy was earned through trust and an established good behavior record), nor is it an issue of trust – it’s called being a 21st century parent. If you don’t know what your kids are doing online, you aren’t doing your job as a parent. If you aren’t monitoring what your kids do online and watch them, someone else will…