The Social Networking Face-Off

What’s so captivating about the e-profiles and buddy lists on MySpace, Xanga, vMix, and whatever pops up next? Why do parents flip out about them? Is there a compromise that can make kids happy e-communicators and parents less worried? Yes, there is. You can give your child social space without putting him or her in jeopardy.

Putting the high-tech social whirl into perspective
For today’s youth, IMing and texting are the equivalent of yesteryear’s yapping on the telephone. Think back to when your own mother would exclaim, “You’ve seen your friends all day in school; what can you possibly have to say 10 minutes after you get home?!” The need to communicate is eternal, only the means of communicating have evolved.

Ten- to 15-year-olds live in a peer-obsessed world. The social drama of the here and now—keeping up with who’s going out with whom, and who said what about whom five minutes ago—defines middle-schoolers. IM and the Internet have maximized how many gossip scoops can transpire at once, in tandem with homework, listening to music, and yes, evading anxious parents. “Caution your child to refrain from writing anything in an IM or blog, or posting any photos, that he or she wouldn’t want a mother, a teacher, or everyone at school to see.”
 
Starting around age 12, kids crave privacy and seek to create a private life. Sometimes that means having secrets with friends and keeping those secrets from parents. Internet communications allow kids to make intimate confessions, particularly because kids will say things online that they’d never express in person. Also, because parents can’t overhear the conversations, IMing affords privacy. If mom sneaks a peek at the computer screen, tweens shift into a dialect intended to be indecipherable to parents. For example, a child may type “PIR” to warn “parent in room,” or “POS” to indicate “parent over shoulder.”

The secret-keeping and rapport that empower young socializers in cyberspace often terrify parents. Why? Because adults did not grow up with cyber technologies embedded in their lives. Today’s tweens (kids who are in between childhood and the teen years) have always had the Internet in their lives. And along with feeling more comfortable with cyber technologies comes having fewer fears about them.

Many parents fear that predators are everywhere in the anonymous and potentially dishonest cyberspace terrain, but in fact, the percentage of kids being sexually solicited online is declining. A 1999/2000 survey conducted by the University of New Hampshire’s Crimes Against Children Research Center found that 19 percent of Internet users between the ages of 10 and 17 had received an unwanted request to engage in sexual conversation or activity. In 2005, only 13 percent reported receiving such a request. The report on the 2005 survey attributes some of this reduction to more cautious online behavior by youth, fewer of whom are interacting online with people they don’t know.

Setting rules to address “stranger danger”
To be sure, any percentage of innocent tweens being exposed to predators is too high. But the answer is not in going backward and banning all online social networking. Heed the standard advice first: Keep the computer in a public area. Ask your child to take you to his or her favorite sites so you can upgrade your computer skills and acquire inside information.

Here are a few more strategies that parents and tweens can live with:

• Honor the boundaries between public and private information. Growing up in the Jerry Springer–celebrity tell-all culture, kids don’t know the difference between what is okay to share with others and what is too personal to make common knowledge. This can get kids into trouble, so explain the difference. Caution your child to refrain from writing anything in an IM or blog, or posting any photos, that he or she wouldn’t want a mother, a teacher, or everyone at school to see. Teach your child to never post an address, school name, sports event, or team name, and to never e-mail pictures to strangers.
• Build trust. Rather than asking yourself whether you can trust your child, consider whether your child can trust you. During the tween years, children will likely be faced with invitations from peers to smoke that first marijuana joint, drink a beer, or be part of a stupid prank (on video no less). Young adolescents desperately need a decision-making consultant. You want to fill that role. Your being a trustworthy parent raises the odds that your child will turn to you in moments of confusion or danger.
• Combine academics with socializing. Tweens yearn to socialize with peers 24/7. If you want to reduce electronic socializing, create face-to-face substitutes. Plan homework get-togethers, complete with pizza. Arrange for an older or wiser student to tutor a younger one. Lobby for scholastic tournaments at school, such as a Jeopardy-type competition.

The old advertisement for the Yellow Pages told you to “let your fingers do the walking.” In our high-tech times, fingers do the talking. Kids have their own high-tech dialect. They upload photos and produce their own videos. This ability is at their fingertips, and there’s no going back. To be able to guide your tweens, rather than battle them, you need to take your values and common sense with you into the future and leave your fears behind.

Margaret Sagarese and Charlene C. Giannetti are the authors of several books about middle-schoolers, including Boy Crazy! Keeping Your Daughter’s Feet on the Ground When Her Head Is in the Clouds (Broadway Books, 2006). They are consultants to schools, parent groups, nonprofits, and businesses, and can be reached at msagarese@aol.com or www.rollercoasteryears.com.