Teen social networkers: Thinking about privacy

For a good reality check on teens’ privacy online and how they handle it, don’t miss this report by National Public Radio’s Laura Sydell. Parents may not be comfortable with what kids put online, but at least they can take comfort that most teens who use social sites take advantage of privacy controls and the young people Sydell spoke with are really thinking about the issue, not just blithely putting stuff out there. As they should be, and this is why parents need to continue encourage their kids to think critically in this way: Privacy conditions are constantly changing on them, with that gray area between ethical and unethical use of their information growing (see ArsTechnica). An example from Slashdot: “Because Facebook allows users to ‘tag’ photos with the names of friends, it is possible for third-party apps to distribute photos that a user might only want to be seen by their inner circle of friends.”