Topical Teaching

The message to parents has been clear: Monitor your child’s Facebook page to ensure that they maintain their page in a safe and responsible way.  But there are parents who think they are doing a meticulous job of supervising their children, only to come undone by a loophole being heavily exploited to ward off protective parents:

Are you a parent who keeps an eye on who posts what on your child’s Facebook account? Perhaps you know their password and sneak a look at their messages from time to time? You may even enjoy the trusted privilege of being a “friend”.

Whatever the situation, social networking sites are a source of anxiety for parents, and now the latest trend will only add to their alarm. Children are staying way ahead of attempts by parents and schools to police their online activity And the latest ruse is a secret, fake-name Facebook account.

“Some kids will have two or even three,” says Dr Barbie Clarke, of the youth research agency Family Kids and Youth, who monitors online trends among schoolchildren in the UK.

“Their habits change and we’re seeing them progress from the obvious lie about their age – allowing them to use Facebook in the first place – to this second or third identity. It’s usually driven by Mum picking up on something from their page and raising it with them. They want privacy and they want a secret world.” She is very relaxed about Facebook use by children, saying she thinks they are generally more sensible and supportive of each other than they get credit for. “A second identity can be used for nastiness, to anonymously bully, but generally it’s about secrecy – like a secret diary, or dialogue they can have away from parents and other family members.”

Many children use school facilities to access their fake accounts. “I have two,” admits Harriet, 14.

I feel sorry for today’s parents.  With new and highly specialised technological advances flooding the market, parents are finding it much harder to adapt than their children.  No matter how hard they try to supervise and protect their children, sometimes it must feel like hitting your head against a brick wall.

Tags: Bullying, Children, Dr Barbie Clarke, facebook, Family Kids and Youth, ICT, kids, Kidscape, Lyn Cook, Parenting, Peter Bradley, social media, Social-networking, Spying, Xbox Live

This entry was posted on October 3, 2011 at 9:29 am and is filed under Parenting, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.