Where is your teen?

Your teen can be anywhere right now. Yep, right in front of you.

First let me go ahead and say some opinionated things that may get me stoned. I tend to believe that any device your teen uses is yours. I don't care if they pay for that cell phone with their babysitting allowance. I believe in transference of roof. It's a nifty term I just made up to say that if they live under your roof, they submit to your rules.

I also believe in raising good kids. Trust and verify, baby.

Okay. So back to the original. Where is your teen? What is he or she doing online?

The most depressing aspect of the Chris Hansen show To Catch a Predator isn't how excruciatingly stupid some child predators are. It's how excruciatingly stupid they can be so many times. The recidivism is painfully appalling.

Charitably, I think most parents know to check Facebook. Many parents I know (smartly, IMHO) insist that formal Friendship with themselves is a requirement for their kids to use Facebook. But, do you know your kids friends? Have you met, or even glanced at the profile of any of the 900?

Of even more concern is Twitter.

A few years back, youth workers and pundits alike wondered as to why teens just were not adopting Twitter in large numbers. It seemed like the perfect outlet. It could be managed via text, so you didn't necessarily need a smartphone. It allowed for private conversations and crude broadcast messaging. It was free.

Still, most data showed teens just didn't cotton to it. That was then, though. Things seem to be have changing. With Facebook being ever more clogged, and with the realization that parents have "ruined" it (and hey, my mom is on FB. Weird), teens seem to be giving Twitter a try. More teens have cheap cell phones, and they are inviting their friends to join them across the networking pond.

The problem is that the conversation is much more hidden.

Twitter is a micro-blogging service that provides much of the same stuff Facebook provides to the content-hungry teen, including even greater anonymity. No "real" names are required, and the privacy options are tougher to fool than Facebook.

In other words, Twitter is a teen haven.

So back to the initial question. Does your teen tweet? If they do, are they willing to show you their timeline?

This is part 1 of a 3-part mini-ebook. Come back for part 2


Photo courtesy of eldh via Flickr Creative Commons.