Should 'Tweens Be On the Internet: Sing it, Bobby!

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"Social" and "teen":  two words that just seem to go together.  "Social" and "'tween", well of course, 'tweens are social, but the question is:  should they be on social networking sites?  In a previous blog, we talked about the Facebook Panic Button that Great Britain was calling for to TRY and keep children safe from child predators online.  Yesterday I posted an article from ABC's Good Morning America about a New Jersey Principal calling for the parents of 'tweens to get their children off of social networking sites in order to reduce incidents of bullying.  The common thread?  Youth.  The real question, are 'tweens emotionally ready to be on the Internet?


I have family and friends with 'tweens on these sites.  Ultimately the decision is up to the parents of these children as to whether they should be on there.  If a parent determines a child can open an account, it is then the parent's responsibility to monitor it.  Each child is different.  Some are more mature than others.  Some have a higher level of integrity.  Some are great kids with fabulous boundaries and incredible decision making skills.  Some could find trouble in a padded room with no windows and no sharp objects.  Some kids could get in trouble while asleep.  It's just the way the world is, and the parent who can hold the child's hand, has the ability to monitor email accounts, web searches, networking accounts, and make sure little Christopher or little Christine has his or her Twitter clothes on might have a child who can be on the Internet.


I would not want the responsibility.  I have too many responsibilities.  Taking additional time out to go through website after website to read comments, see what Billy or Johnny, Sue or Polly are looking at online, what was said, how it was said, what information is being given out, who it's being given to, etc. is much too much work.  It is hard enough to keep a kid safe on your residential street, I would not want to keep a kid safe on the Information Super Highway.  Eventually kids need to have the skills to use the Internet which really should come gradually, and it should be monitored.  Always reminding him or her that with "great reward comes great responsibility".  Trust and freedom need to be earned, and age does have a way of letting hormones and decision making skills mellow which certainly helps too.  If you wouldn't want to let your child walk down the middle of a regular highway because the odds of something bad happening are high, then letting a child walk down the Information Super Highway probably has the same odds of something zooming by and hurting him or her there, too.


Remember that first time you got feedback that the email you sent out IN ALL CAPS WAS CONSIDERED YELLING, and you found out someone took offense?  Or when you accidentally sent out an email to the wrong person or with an error, and you wished you could recall it, but by then it was too late?  Or in 1992 when you got into an AOL chat room and pretended to be someone you weren't just to see if you could get away it?  If we can find ourselves in plenty of trouble with the Internet, how can we not question if our kids can handle it?


Is your 'tween emotionally ready to deal with seeing something he or she shouldn't, or reading something negative about his or herself that is posted for everyone to see?  Is he or she ready to deal with the fall-out that might happen if he or she posts something that hurts someone else?  If your 'tween is ready for all of that, he or she must be more emotional mature than I am, and more than most of the people in the world, because realistically, none of us like dealing with drama, and we don't stop struggling with it as adults.  


The fact is Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Loopt, even email can all seem innocent enough.  You can talk to your best friend's daughter in elementary school, your second cousin twice removed who's in Jr. High, and your neighbor's cousin's uncle's sister's kid, and it might all be fine because you're an upstanding citizen with good intentions and appropriate boundaries, but not everyone out there is like you and sooner or later someone will be the wrong person who was intentionally on accident let into that child's life.

If you're the kind of person who gets upset over Facebook privacy settings being changed because you feel you are being exposed, then think about how your child is being exposed by being on the Internet.  As the "wise" Bobby Brown would say, it really is your "prerogative (do what you want to do)."  Just make sure - as your children are growing up in a society where their world is no longer confined to the neighborhood you live in - you make sure that "every little step" they take "you will be there".

Social Media and the Pea by Alice Ann Williams is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at www.socialmediaandthepea.blogspot.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.socialmediaandthepea.blogspot.com/.

Good Morning America's Article: NJ Middle School Principal Urges Facebook, MySpace Block

New Jersey Middle School Principal Urges Facebook, MySpace Block

Tells Parents That Social Media Sites Are Bringing Emotional Pain to Their Kids

By STEVEN PORTNOY

April 29, 2010 —

A New Jersey public school principal has had enough of the harm -- from sexual predators or mean girls -- that can come to young teens on sites like Facebook and MySpace.
So Anthony Orsini, principal at Benjamin Franklin Middle School in Ridgewood, N.J., wants kids blocked from the sites at school and at home.
Orsini told "Good Morning America" today that the online taunting used to be limited to students in eighth grade or higher. Now he's seeing kids as young as fourth grade creating Facebook pages to bash a classmate.
"It's become meaner and meaner and they don't understand" the impact, he said. "They aren't socially and emotionally ready to understand."
He urged parents to make sure the computer is in a public space in the house and to keep an eye on their children's online habits.
"We see the times that things are posted on line -- 2:30 in the morning, 1:30 in the morning," he said. "Students are supposed to be asleep at that time."
"It is time for every single member of the B.F. community to take a stand!" Orsini urged parents this week via e-mail.
"There is absolutely, positively no reason for any middle school student to be a part of a social networking site!" Orsini wrote, calling on parents to prohibit their kids' access.
It's not so much the risk posed by adults that worries him, Orsini said. Rather, it's what children can do to one another in status updates, photo tags, and wall postings that's compelling him to act.
"It is not hyperbole for me to write that the pain caused by social networking sites is beyond significant," Orsini told parents.

Too Late to Bar Kids Facebook?

Critics suggest it may be too late to bar school kids from social network.
Ellen Galinsky, the president of the Families and Work Institute, which researches changes in the workplace and in family life, said Orsini is "right on" in believing that children can do harm to each other on social networking sites, but she believes it's "folly" to think that young teens can or should be prohibited from accessing them.
"[Social networking sites] are part of kids' culture," Galinsky said. "We've just got to be very strong about using them well."
Facebook said its service is only designed for children ages 13 and over, and that young users have "on every page" the ability to report inappropriate content.
"I actually think the responsibility is not just a Facebook responsibility, it's a community responsibility," Facebook spokesman Elliot Schrage said Wednesday.
Still, Orsini told ABC News that he and his fellow administrators -- along with the school's guidance counselors -- spend "a huge amount of time" dealing with the social and emotional problems that arise online.
These issues have "totally taken over," Orsini told ABC News. "It's overwhelming."
Sixth, seventh and eighth graders famously have difficulty dealing with new friendships, budding relationships, bullying and the other interpersonal dynamics of the physical world.
"They simply aren't psychologically ready" to handle these issues in cyberspace, Orsini said.
"It is not worth the risk to your child to allow them the independence at this age to manage these sites on their own," Orsini wrote to parents, "not because they are not good kids or responsible, but because you cannot control the poor actions of anonymous others."

Orsini: Middle Schoolers 'Simply Aren't Psychologically Ready'

Several children who have committed suicide in the midst of online torment have been of middle school age, including Megan Meier of Missouri and Ryan Halligan of Vermont. Both died at age 13.
In his e-mail, Orsini urged parents to install software to restrict and monitor the sites their children visit, and to check their kids' text messages.
"I will be more than happy to take the blame off you as a parent if it is too difficult to have the students close their accounts," Orsini wrote, "but it is time they all get closed and the texts always get checked."
ABC News' national correspondent, Jim Hickey, contributed to this report.

Social Media and the Pea by Alice Ann Williams is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at www.socialmediaandthepea.blogspot.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.socialmediaandthepea.blogspot.com/.