Once there was a young woman who posted a joke on Twitter, and she thought that only her 170 followers would be able to see it. She clicked “Tweet” and climbed on a plane for an 11-hour flight from New York City to Cape Town, South Africa.
And while she was sleeping, her world blew up.
To her, her tweet was just a bit of harmless fun. But others—thousands of others, in fact tens of thousands—interpreted it as offensive and racist. Someone who had seen the tweet shared it with the editor of a popular blog. When he shared it with his friends, it went viral. Her friend deleted her account before she even landed, but as one Twitter user noted, “Your tweet lives on forever.”
Soon she lost her job and was publicly humiliated.
Adolescents have a penchant for acting before they think things through thoroughly. Have you talked to your child about who sees what they post? Do you think they consider whether their posts could ever get them into trouble down the line?
Here are some ideas about how to teach adolescents how to use social media in responsible ways.
- Talk with your kids. Even if they’re only giving you one-word answers to what you say, they’re still listening and absorbing what you’re saying.
- The younger they are when you start talking with them, the better.
- Let them see you interacting on social media in responsible ways. Do you check your phone while you’re in a conversation with them? Are you mindful of what you post and who may be able to see your posts?
- Allow them to get out of sticky situations by blaming you. Let your daughter know, for example, that if someone asks her to send them a photo of her body, she can get out of doing it by telling the person that you’re checking her phone and she’ll get into trouble.
- Rule of thumb: Don’t post anything you wouldn’t want your grandma or your boss to see. Even posts that are deleted can be cached, making them searchable later; or someone may have taken a screen-shot and passed it along before it was deleted. How much would it hurt to, for example, be denied college admission because of an unwise post that turned up?
This article gives some more good ideas about how to teach adolescents about using social media wisely.
How have you approached conversations about social media with your adolescent? What other ideas do you think it’s important for teens to remember about using social media wisely? Let us know your thoughts below!