The Durable Human

Advice for Parents who “Friend” their Kids

Sometimes parents are their own worst enemies when they “friend” their kids on Facebook.  

Thinking back on high school, no one wanted to be embarrassed in front of their friends. So why would we want to bring that on our children?

This week, the Family Online Safety Institute and Microsoft invited top researchers to talk about teens and social media. Turns out that kids tend their Facebook gardens very carefully. “There’s a delight in sharing yourself with others,” said Amanda Lenhart of the Pew Internet and American Life Project, but ”they have a specific audience in mind.” 

To young Facebook users, the site is a vast public stage. Since they know their every move can be viewed by others, when depicting themselves “the choice is to exclude rather than include,” says danah boyd of Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. “There is a high level of encoding. They are going to public spaces to socialize, but they are trying to achieve privacy in a social context where they could never assume they have privacy.”

So, although many nouns, adjectives and explanation points may appear in their profiles, other information is deliberately left out. Teen users speak and behave according to shared mores, often using terms only their peers fully understand. 

The last thing they need is for Mom to say something stupid or over-react to a comment which is no big deal to the target audience.

Kim Sanchez, FOSI Chair and Microsoft Director of Privacy and Online Safety explains:

So how to does a parent attain peaceful coexistence on Facebook and other “networked publics”? Sanchez says the first step is to talk with your child–and accept gracefully if you’re asked to watch quietly from the wings.

Though it’s tempting to try to fit in with the younger crowd, Sanchez says we do our children a disservice if we act like one of the kids. As we saw in the last post, Lenhart’s research proves that kids look to parents for digital solace and advice. So we are most useful when we act our age and model sensible behavior—in and out of social networks.

Then again, maybe none of us should be on Facebook in the first place. Also this week, the New York Times hit a nerve with a story called “The Facebook Resisters.”  Scan some of the hundreds of comments, then ask yourself (and comment here): Is being on Facebook worth it?

Social Networks Mirror Teen Social Lives

How teens get along within social networks reflects what happens in real life – for good and for bad.

Just as they do face to face, kids love to socialize online. Four out of five online teens hang out on social networks. Some of them may like to tweet or dabble in MySpace, but practically all have a profile on Facebook. “No one had any idea how quickly and or how widely this would spread,” says Stephen Balkam, director of the Family Online Safety Institute which sponsored the new report by the Pew Research Center.

The majority of kids between age 12 and 17 think people are mainly friendly in the digital space. But many, especially black teens, have witnessed mean and cruel behavior. Some younger girls have been so shook up by what they’ve seen, they were worried about going to school the next day. 

The most common response to observing meanness is to ignore it. “Parents have instructed kids to stay out of these things to avoid conflict and in-person conflict where things move back and forth from online to physical space,” says Amanda Lenhart, senior researcher on the study.  Her data is from phone surveys of hundreds of teens and their parents as well as focus groups held in the Washington, D.C. in the spring and summer of 2011.

Parents have by far the biggest influence on how their kids behave online. Almost all parents talk to their kids about what’s appropriate to share on the Internet and the proper use of a cellphone. About half the parents surveyed also use computer controls to regulate how their children surf the Internet. But only 1 in 4 sets limits on their child’s increasingly sophisticated cellphone.  

Some other surprises:

Sexting is much less prevalent than has been portrayed.  Only 2% of teens have sent a nude or nearly nude picture of themselves, although 18% have been on the receiving end. Says Lenhart: “There is a lot of knowledge about it but not as much direct experience as you would think.”

Older teens think twice about what they post online.  17 year olds in particular, who have college and jobs in mind, say they have refrained from posting images which might reflect poorly on their judgment and reputations. Balkam observes: “Pew found how much kids are learning how to adapt to the new realities of social network sites.”

Many 12 year olds lie about their age to get on Facebook.  Even though Facebook is off limits to anyone under 13, 45% of online 12 year olds say they have accounts. 

Parents are paying attention. Two out of three teens say their parents have checked their Facebook profiles. Many parents “friend” their children, but that doesn’t seem to have much impact on their online social lives, at least while selective blocking remains an option. 

So – looking at all this juicy new data – are parents too involved with their kids’ online social lives – or not involved enough?

I spoke with Amanda Lenhart and Stephen Balkam about their new report on November 3, 2011.