How to offer your children love, respect and appropriate safe-guards against technological landmines.
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Bzzzt Bzzzt Bzzzt. My phone is looking for attention.
My 9-year-old son is texting me. The string of hearts fills my screen as my own heart swells a little.
“Moity,” he writes — one in a huge line of nicknames he has given me — “You the bestie.”
There is something about our text exchanges that bring out the sweet voice of his babyhood.
“Love. Love. Love.,” he writes.
“I love my mama,” he continues before I can even respond.
He has interrupted me, bringing me up to reality from down a rabbit hole of research on sexting. He is, I realize, just two years younger than one of the four Pennsylvania boys who arrested for transmitting obscene materials after a sexting scandal.
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In the past six months stories have popped up across the country involving kids as young as eleven.
CNN covered a case in my home state of Colorado where students traded hundreds of naked pictures of themselves. Colorado is not one of the states that has written specific laws surrounding teen sexting so this case will be handled under child pornography laws. The possible penalties are severe, including registration as a sex offender and time in federal detention.
Virtually every parent at the table says they oversee their kids’ social media presence. Some of them log in when their kids are at school and others have gone so far as to hack friend’s profiles to help cover their tracks. The parents have mastered Facebook and Instagram but feel wary that they will be able to understand new sites as they pop up.
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Some of these incidents include sophisticated technological know-how. Photos were stored in digital vaults or edited to add a classmate’s face to a pornographic scene. In other incidents private pictures became public through basic negligence.
This is certainly one way that sharing is NOT caring.
Several families from our urban public school gather for dinner frequently. Long after sunset the adults stay around the table expressing their fears of the huge world that our intermediate-school-aged kids are stepping into. We talk about solo bike rides down busy streets, staying out after dark, and the pain of being the only kid left out of a recent birthday party. Then conversation turns to the evils of cyber-bullying and child pornography.
Virtually every parent at the table says they oversee their kids’ social media presence. Some of them log in when their kids are at school and others have gone so far as to hack friend’s profiles to help cover their tracks. The parents have mastered Facebook and Instagram but feel wary that they will be able to understand new sites as they pop up.
Periscope is today’s example. We watch a cab driver in Thailand narrate his trip through unfamiliar roads. The access and connection is both thrilling and overwhelming. It’s not difficult to imagine someone using Periscope to share in real time something we don’t want our kids to see. Periscope works like Snapchat. After a time the broadcast disappears.
No amount of sleuthing on a parent’s part will ever reveal everything that our kids have seen and heard.
Observing is not enough. At its worst oversight can cross the line into invasion of privacy.I believe this can erode trust between parents and children and make it less likely that they will willingly share their negative experiences.
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Instead of reading their incoming email my husband and I are taking the following 5 steps to help educate our boys about sexting and responsible use of technology.
1. Offering Our Trust.
Lori Cunningham, founder of Well Connected Mom, advises parents to present their children with a contract that includes the fact that their phone and all apps will be monitored. My husband and I will explain that we do not intend to monitor our boys’ communication, but that as their phone is a privilege they are responsible for understanding what kind of communication is allowed by our family and the law.
We will also remind them that they have shown us that they are respectful of themselves and their friends and we imagine that will continue. We don’t wear helmets when we snowboard because we hit the trees every time we hit the slopes. We wear helmets because head injury is a slight but real possibility. Cyber safeguards are the helmets of social networks.
2. Defining the Terms.
We wanted to know what our boys already know about sexting. So we asked them.
Then we read this definition from “Teach Thought” together:
“Sexting is what it sounds like it might be — sending sexually-implicit or explicit text message. These are usually multimedia texts — pictures of the sender in various stages of undress. But they don’t necessarily have to be nude images. Sexually implicit text-only messages also qualify. In fact, sexting could be defined as the process of sending any communication that relays sexual desire or intent.These are usually sent from a mobile device, whether through the phone’s stock messaging system, or apps like Snapchat. This makes them easy to take, send, and delete while minimizing getting caught.”
3. Laying down the law.
The legal ramifications of minors sexting vary from state to state. We will read the Colorado law together. The potential consequences of sexting shows how seriously our government takes this offense. The point of reviewing this together is to review that sexual interaction should be invited and should be private. If communication crosses either of those boundaries there could be serious consequences.
4. Developing a plan.
The catchy “Stranger Danger!” directive from early childhood works well here. “Say no, then go, and tell.”
Here is the plan we will share with our boys:
- Say No: Do not ask to take a naked picture of someone else or offer consent to have a nude picture taken of you.
- Then Go: Sexual interaction should be invited and should be private. They should get themselves physically out of any setting that breaks this rule. They should never send any messages that break this rule. They should delete any messages that they receive that break this rule.
- And Tell: Come to us with any communication that makes them feel uncomfortable. Law Street Media advises that:
“To protect oneself, it would also [in addition to deleting the message] be a good idea for the recipient to send a message stating that the image is not wanted or requested.”
5. Leaving Our Door Open.
Everything circles back to how we trust our boys. We know how respectful they can be, that they are regularly exploring and refining their own values. Despite this they will probably see, hear and even do things that make them feel uncomfortable. When that happens we can help them understand what it is that set off their alarm bells.
We are here to help them navigate this world. Because we love, love, love them.
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For information on “how to enhance the positive benefits offered by electronic media while mitigating some of the possible dangers, like sexting, pornography, and “cyber-bullying” visit cyberwise.org.
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Photo credit: Pixabay/420750
Every parent should be having this conversation with their kids!