As if Parenting Wasn't Difficult Enough...

To add to their woes about contemporary parenting, most adults can’t adequately police their teen’s cyber world because they simply don’t know how.  It’s so different from teaching a sixteen year old to drive; because in this arena, our kids know more than we do.  Yet, (and rightly so), as parents and teachers we still feel responsible for our teenager’s cyber mistakes.  Given that paradox in which we need our kids to explain to us what should be within our parental role, it’s even more important to simply have open and honest communication about our expectations for their behavior.  

Without getting into the specifics of which applications they should or should not use, our discussions with our kids must still  include our expectation that they be the same person online as they are in their everyday life in Litchfield, Connecticut, and the other locales they visit.   If they wouldn’t walk up to a perfect stranger on the street and ask that person’s advice, they shouldn’t do that online either.  If they wouldn’t express their frustration or anger to a teacher or a friend face-to-face, they shouldn’t hide behind their computer screen. If they wouldn't swear, use vulgarity, or --shame in public, they shouldn't ignore those instincts in texts, messages, and posts.   The cyberworld is not a place to unleash a side of themselves about which they will never feel proud.  They are who their actions say they are, regardless of who knows about it.  Bullying someone online makes you a bully; sharing an explicit photo online makes you a pornographer; creating a false identity to spy on or harass someone online makes you a stalker.   

In truth, much of the “chatter” in their electronic world is teen-centered and harmless.  But, some of it is not.  When it is mean, targeted, and especially when it’s anonymous, this “chatter” is dangerous.  While some people claim it nothing more than the modern version of the "for a good time call Sally" graffiti we dealt with on the walls in the school restrooms, others find it much more far-reaching and insidious.  Unlike the bathroom wall which can be painted over, cyberworld graffiti cannot be undone and might haunt both the victim and the perpetrator long into adulthood.  The following three topics are examples of how our teens may be participating in the electronic world. These applications only skim the surface; and very quickly, they will be usurped by others.  

After School: the App

This is a relatively new application.  It is billed as “Funny Anonymous School News For Confessions And Compliments.”  Supposedly, a teen can share his or her inner most thoughts without fear of ridicule or backlash.  It was a place to get advice about deep issues, such as the best way to tell your parents you’re pregnant, or gay, or have an online gambling problem.  In short, it's a vehicle to poll other teens (strangers, however) about the everyday problems they face… or, a way to just share a great piece of news and celebrate being a kid. But a quick look at its anonymity feature reveals an uglier truth; and anyone can quickly see how this application can wreak havoc in a school community.  

This app checks your credentials against Facebook to ensure that you are a student. The lack of a school/student affiliation is what shuts adults and parents out.  The app then connects you to other students all of whom post anonymously.  It is this anonymity which makes the application so dangerous to the school environment.  While the application was envisioned as a safe space for high schoolers to discuss sensitive issues without having to reveal their names, in truth posters have no accountability for the nature of their posts and any kind of natural peer-to-peer monitoring disappears.  Anonymous posters can openly spread rumors, name-call, body-shame, send threats, or even tell someone the best solution to the problem is to kill themself.

Apple removed After School from its App store a while back, but it reappeared quickly with new filtering features.  The developers say it now has a warning system that asks any teen who posts signs of self-harm if he or she would like to text with a counselor.  They claim to have connected about 50,000 teens with counselors.  There are a crew of employees who randomly check messages that use key words and who attend to messages that are reported to them.  

To learn more about After School, click here.

  

Yik Yak: For Smartphone, iOS, Android

Yik Yak combines the features of a GPS system (which pinpoints your location) and ‘instant messaging.’  In other words, users can anonymously ‘yak’ to other random users who are within approximately one and a half miles without revealing who they are.     Thus, it is an “effectively anonymous” messaging board which requires no user profile. 

The developers did include a technology, called “geofencing,” which allows middle schools and high schools to be ‘fenced’ off using the GPS technology.  The supposedly app would not be accessible in a fenced-off area.

The developers also implemented self-filtering prompts.  If a yakker should key the word “Jewish” or “bomb,” for example, they would get a warning: “Pump the brakes, this yak may contain threatening language. Now it’s probably nothing and you’re probably an awesome person but just know that Yik Yak and law enforcement take threats seriously. So you tell us, is this yak cool to post?”

However, despite geofencing and self-filtering, Yik Yak allows small groups of anonymous people to comment back and forth about real or made-up events, in polite or non-polite ways, with good or ill intentions, in real time.  

At a high school having trouble with Yik Yak, the principal tried to intervene by holding an assembly about the proper uses of social media.  Within minutes of the assembly beginning, a Yik Yak message said the principal and a female teacher had been spotted together on the nurse’s office couch.  Last spring, a sophomore at Middlebury College, was scrolling through Yik Yak in the dining hall when she happened across a post comparing her to a “hippo” and making a sexual references about her.  At a college campus, a Yik Yak reading, “I’m gonna [gun emoji] the school at 12:15 p.m. today,” caused panic.  

You could make the claim that messages such as these come quickly to the attention of adults and are just as quickly sorted out.   But, when the lie reads that sophomore ‘Sally Jones’ was seen with senior ‘Jill Adam’s’ boyfriend, the kids try to attend to the problem themselves, often ineffectively, and do not seek help from adults until the impact of the false message is out of control.   The victims of these messages, as they look around the hallways or cafeteria, don’t know where these messages are coming from, but they know the aggression against them is very close. The anonymous nature of Yik Yak brings and additional amount of fear.

To learn more about Yik Yak click here.

Am I Pretty? Videos

Since 2010, Am I Pretty? videos have become a trend or fad among young teenage girls mostly in the 11 – 14 age group.  It only takes a few minutes for a young girl to take a selfie video and upload it to YouTube, asking the question “Am I Pretty?” and allowing strangers to rate her appearance through their comments.  Many consider this impulsive action to be a form of self-harm, like cutting or purging, particularly if the young girl checks on her video daily for comments.  Both the nature of the comments ("Your kinda cute but them teeth...oh gosh no") and the lack of any comments (no attention to one's video) can be toxic to a girl's self-esteem.  

Girls who participate say they are looking for honest feedback because they do not believe the compliments they hear so often from their mothers and fathers.  They no longer care what their families think and want to know what the world thinks of their appearance.  They ask the strangers viewing their video to be honest, saying they can take it.  But, when people who are trolling these videos give feedback, can these girls truly take it?

Currently, there are thousands of Am I Pretty? videos on YouTube, but every day many are taken down and others added making it impossible to determine the total number of girls who have participated.  Most of the comments young girls receive are positive or supportive; but, the danger in this activity is that, unlike social networking, there is no familiar audience of friends and family to intervene following the post giving support to a young girl who is ridiculed or taunted.   

To learn more about Am I Pretty? videos click here.

A Climate of Outrage?

My grandchildren text me.  A possible conversation evaporates into a single word. Or worse yet into OMGs and IDKs and LOLs.   At the same time, I sense their stress levels have escalated; and with dancing lessons, soccer practice, games scheduled 2-hours away, homework, and rec-center basketball about to start, their idle moments have all but disappeared.

It used to be the TV remote was the center of power in the family room.  Now everything is handheld. And much of what these devices deliver into their world is valueless.  In the media, egos outshine ethics; celebrity ‘train wrecks’ subordinate real-life heroes; and no one wants to read about two 10- year-old boys raking lawns to raise $120 for wounded veterans when they can zero-in on how the Duggar family gets their haircuts.

And, outrage about all of this surges around us everywhere.  For many, too much of the small stuff takes us from 0 to 60 in seconds.   It feels like over the past three years, outrage has become our ‘default’ setting.   We are equally outraged when the kid at the supermarket can’t make proper change as we are at child slavery in the cocoa farms in Western Africa.

Yes, perhaps outrage is appropriate when we’re stuck on the runway awaiting departure for 2 hours or when our elderly parent waits too long, yet again, for an aide in the nursing home.  But, are we also outraged when our child doesn’t get enough playing time, when he or she isn’t invited to the birthday party, or when the teacher uses ‘principal’ instead of ‘principle’ in an email comment about a behavior problem?

This isn’t mine, but I’ve read it somewhere and I like it.  There is a damaging cycle to outrage. Obviously it begins with the quick rise from 'perception of a wrong' to white-hot anger.  It is followed by the piling on of more details and offences.  Then, there is the sarcasm, accusations, attacks, and counter-attacks.  There’s the contempt and the accompanying insults.  There’s the Tweet and the Facebook post, making it easy to stoke the outrage from the car, the dinner table, and even the bed.   Sometimes, outrage ends in chagrin and an apology; but more often, the storm of outrage just smolders out there in the world where we've left it until it eventually dies down of its own accord.

The same cycle takes place regardless of how big or how small is the impetus for the ‘outrage.’  If we could remember them and list all the things from January to now that have caused us outrage, how many of these things would cause us to wonder what was I thinking?  And what do they then cause our children to wonder about?  How are our kids supposed to filter what things in their world are worthy of outrage if everything is?

This past summer there was a picture that went viral of a drowned Syrian boy, a refugee, whose family was trying to reach Greece.  It seemed that there was more outrage over the publication of the picture than there was over the circumstances that led to the drowning.  How are we using our outrage?  What lessons are we teaching through the media?  Through our own example?

We need to remember that children are affected by the quality of the adult interactions that occur in their presence, even when they not the center of those interactions.  Our emotional demeanor, (i.e. our content, happiness, and generosity … or our disgust, anger, and aggression) influences their feelings about their world.   We become mirrors of the world -- and, when they look at adults do they see a wondrous place, or a wrathful one?   Check any source, and you’ll find tension in adults is negatively linked to childhood development and esteem.

Knowing what we know about our children's world – texts, snapchats, posts, sound-bites, emoticons – perhaps we can do more to make the real world they live in a place of interest and beauty.  There’s no end to the quotes you can find about compassion and generosity of spirit, but recently we had an adult workshop with a fabulous guest speaker who also worked with students and staff at the high school.  Calvin Terrell, the founder of Social Centric, left us with the message that our daily lives and our ‘Litchfield’ community can be better if stop making negative and judgmental assumptions about the people we encounter.  If we just let today be the day we look for some good in the everyday people we meet and if we respect their journey.  This isn’t to say we should ignore maliciousness when we see it -- just that maybe we should not see every mistake or misstep as evil and reserve our ‘outrage’ for the truly titanic issues our world is facing.