Social Networks and Teen Lives
Social networks are highly immersive
Many teens disguise who they are
Parents are out of the loop
The importance of privacy
Check out the survey
Face-to-face or face-to-cyberspace?
Common Sense Media conducted a survey to examine how social networks were affecting kids and families. The results? Kids increasingly connect with friends, classmates, and people with similar interests through social networks -- often outside their parents' awareness.
The poll results illustrate a continuing disconnect between parents and kids when it comes to kids' digital lives. In today's society, there's more technology and less time for parents to supervise their kids' actions and behaviors on Facebook, MySpace, or any other digital environment. Communication and socialization in our kids' world is increasingly moving from face-to-face to face-to-cyberspace. Families need to keep up regular conversations about life in a digital world and what it means to be a safe, smart digital citizen -- including ethical behavior, privacy, bullying, and reputation management.
The call to action is clear: Parents are the first line of defense when it comes to helping our kids use the same senses of responsibility and self-respect whether they're online or off.
Social networks and mobile communication connect our kids to their friends 24/7. For the most part, conversations begun in the classroom hallway more or less continue in the digital space. But there are differences between face-to-face communication and digital communication. It's important to understand how technology is changing the nature of how our kids learn to communicate.
Social networks are highly immersive
Common Sense recently researched how often teens are engaged in their social networks; 22% of teens said they checked their pages more than 10 times a day. That finding becomes more telling when you consider how much less frequently kids are actually talking to each other or connecting face-to-face (2,200-plus texts a month, versus only 200 phone calls, according to Nielsen). Whether they're accessing social networks on their phones, in school, or at home, this means that kids are talking less and posting more.
Many teens disguise who they are
And in an online culture, it's quite possible to be someone else. Of the teens in our survey, 25% said that they had created social network pages under a different identity. On the positive side, the anonymous nature of social networking makes it a relatively safe space for kids to try on different hats and figure out who they are and who they want to be. These sites provide an opportunity to connect in a way that, for lots of reasons, kids may not feel comfortable doing otherwise.
But there's another implication here: Kids can communicate with others under an assumed name. Another 24% of teens said that they had hacked into someone else's social network, giving them the ability to communicate as that person. Since developing trust is such a fundamental part of childhood, the notions of who and what you can trust online have to be discussed with kids.
Finally, when kids communicate anonymously or through a disguised identity, the doors open for lack of accountability. This separation of action and consequence has made irresponsible behavior like cyberbullying possible.
Parents are out of the loop
As our kids increasingly communicate through social networks, parents are cut out of the process of hearing how and what they say to each other. Our research showed that parents vastly underestimate how much time kids spend on social networks. This makes it hard for parents to parent in the crucial areas of social interaction and development.
The importance of privacy
The social networks that connect our kids offer wonderful opportunities for rich interactions and sharing. But sometimes kids can over share, not thinking about the fact that whatever they're doing is taking place before a vast, invisible audience. To protect their privacy (and their reputations), our teens must learn to think before they post. Because they lose control of whatever they put on their network pages. Anything can be cut, pasted, altered, and distributed in the blink of an eye. And once it's been sent around, it's next to impossible to take down.
Check out the survey
To find out more about what teens are doing on social networks and how it's affecting their lives, check out our survey.
Do you know what your kids do on their social networks?
There are 7 community opinions on this topic
What do these adults and educators know about our specific lives and how they are affected by Social Networks? They were all once kids, but things have changed, and different people make different decisions based on the ethics their families and peers helped to mold.
Is it just me, or is anyone else feeling less like a person every time they read these articles and see how much it relates to their lives? I suppose the site has now decreed that all children are equal to the status of dogs and must be monitored 24/7 in order to be kept safe.
Meaning- Answering these articles sensibly is starting to feel like a waste of time to me.
"This means that kids are talking less and posting more.” This is an obviously flawed statement, I (along with every friend of mine) do not use phones and facebook *instead* of talking face to face, but rather as an add-on or extra. If we are with people we talk to people, a lot of the time I can't be with my friends and so I can still talk to them on facebook, or over texting. This is also true with older cousins in college, relatives checking up on me and chatting when I generally wouldn't get to talk to them besides Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving etc.
Also "2,200-plus texts a month, versus only 200 phone calls, according to Nielsen" 200 hundred phone calls, checking my phone my average is about 150, probably 100 or so just being 1 minute or less conversations with coordinating my school pick-up with my dad or mom. So lets discredit those, now we are left with 100, now probably 30 of these are dropped calls (I reason this because the same number is called right after one ended)
Okay so now we have 20 averaging about 30 -45 minutes a piece for an average of about 15 hours, and actually when I look up my minutes talked its more like 12 in the past 31 days. Now, while this may seem to prove this statement, take a look at the texting number 2200. Personally I'm always about at 2000 a month or a little less. Now while this may look like more texts then talk, you must now remember to factor in that I could read off all of these conversations in probably around 2 hours. So there we have it 6:1 talking vs. texting. Not to mention that I face to face talk, at lunch, breaks, and whenever friends are over (face to face conversations happen just as often if not more often then they would have 40 to 50 years ago).
All in all, however, this article is reasonable and well written; it's just that one horribly flawed, and overly biased paragraph that lends a downward slant for today’s youth that makes degrades the rest of the articles authority.
Jakelin (nickname, you were very right about that!) 15
i dont really talk about what i do online.
As a parent of grown kids, I know I missed so much of what they participated in because I was not everywhere they were. Now, in cyberspace, even if I am also wandering around there, we are missing tons more of what our children are doing and saying.
I agree that controling where they go on the Internet, having their passwords, and a certain amount of freedom, and trust, to be able to explore where they play on the networks is very important. I agree that telling them that when they pay for their own, they will have more freedom, but my love for them trumps there freedom if I believe there is an issue.
If you can form a trust between you and your teens, and always be up front when you are wanting to know what they are doing on their networks, keeping the communications open without static, I believe you will likely cause your teen to be more careful and responsible.
Prayer, and love hold the power, and when those cards are played, they trump all others.
My kids are not old enough for social networking, though I know it's around the corner. To prepare them, I share with the news article about adults who shared too much, and the consequences of it (such as losing a job). We talk about how everything on the Internet is public. Period. So far, my kids seem to get it. I hope that lasts.
yes, i must know passwords and ck them every now and then. Till they are grown and pay for thier own laptops and phones ... thats the rule in our home. No password = No laptop