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Who’ll see what I post 20 yrs from now?

November 8, 2008 By Anne Leave a Comment

That’s a question that needs to hang around 24/7 in the back of social networkers’ and bloggers’ minds, because – according to the authors of just-published Born Digital (Basic Books, 2008) – “at no time in human history has information about a young person been more freely and publicly accessible to so many others.” This comes as no surprise to many parents, but few of us know the reasons. Here’s one good one from authors John Palfrey and Urs Gasser: Teen “social norms suggest that more information about yourself will attract more friends.” So a few interesting questions you could ask your kids in a dinner-table conversation (from a blogger in the Digital Natives blog) are: Will sharing their thoughts and everyday life online make them more popular? (Remember, it’s normal if they feel that way – this is a commonly held view among youth – just explain you read it was a social norm and are honestly interested in your child’s take on it.] “Do [they] understand the gravity of what and how much information [they] expose of themselves on the Internet?” And do they “ever take into account that [their] information is owned by the companies offering the services [they] are using? (Parents and teens can look at any social site’s Terms of Service for information on how users’ own content might be used; hopefully the site enforces them.)

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Filed Under: Literacy & Citizenship, reputation, Risk & Safety Tagged With: Born Digital, Digital Natives Project, John Palfrey, Urs Gasser

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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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