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Kids: Budding spin doctors

June 15, 2005 By Anne Leave a Comment

It’s a skill they’ll need to develop, especially if they blog publicly at sites like MySpace.com, Xanga.com, LiveJournal.com (and that’s a question to ask them: Do you know for sure that only your friends can see the posts in your blog?). It’s almost impossible to delete the past or rewrite your history online. Stephanie Rosenbloom gives an example in the New York Times: a 10-year-old picture of her as a brunette in sensible shoes is still “the definitive image of me on the World Wide Web, the one that pops up every time my name is entered in a Google search,” even though the “real Stephanie” is now blonde and wears stilettos. Then there’s the friend of a Washington Post reporter cringing every time she thought about “prospective employers ‘Googling’ her” and finding “a concise and prominent summary of her dating proclivities” (see this item, 4/22). The solution? Rather than trying to get those Web sites to delete the offending photos and text (and many sites are still in the Internet Archive even after they’ve been taken down), be your own spin doctor. “The secret to burying unflattering Web details about yourself is to create a preferred version of the facts on a home page or a blog of your own, then devise a strategy to get high-ranking Web sites to link to you,” the Times reports. An assistant attorney general emailed me recently: “When one of these kids is running for President one day [or interviewing for college admission or a job], those online pictures are sure to show up.” Another daunting thought: party pictures on photoblogs (for future employers to google – see this piece at CNET).

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IMPORTANT RESOURCES

Our (DIGITAL) PARENTING BASICS: Safety + Social
NAMLE, the National Association for Media Literacy Education
CASEL.org & the 5 core social-emotional competencies of SEL
Center for Democracy & Technology
Center for Innovative Public Health Research
Childnet International
Committee for Children
Congressional Internet Caucus Academy
ConnectSafely.org
Control Shift: a pivotal book for Internet safety
Crimes Against Children Research Center
Crisis Textline
Cyber Civil Rights Initiative's Revenge Porn Crisis Line
Cyberwise.org
danah boyd's blog and book about networked youth
Disconnected, Carrie James's book on digital ethics
FOSI.org's Good Digital Parenting
The research of Global Kids Online
The Good Project at Harvard's School of Education
If you watch nothing else: "Parenting in a Digital Age" TED Talk by Prof. Sonia Livingstone
The International Bullying Prevention Association
Let Grow Foundation
Making Caring Common
Raising Digital Natives, author Devorah Heitner's site
Renee Hobbs at the Media Education Lab
MediaSmarts.ca
The New Media Literacies
Report of the Aspen Task Force on Learning & the Internet and our guide to Creating Trusted Learning Environments
The Ruler Approach to social-emotional learning (Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence)
Sources of Strength
"Young & Online: Perspectives on life in a digital age" from young people in 26 countries (via UNICEF)
"Youth Safety on a Living Internet": 2010 report of the Online Safety & Technology Working Group (and my post about it)

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