Parents are keeping tabs on their kids. Any surprise here? No, of course not. What parent doesn’t learn to keep one eye open and one ear open to what their children are doing…in the house, out of the house, in school and online. I remember getting my young teenage daughter her own computer back when she was in 8th grade (BTW….Happy Birthday to both of my kids, William & Margaux…yesterday & today) and being a protective parent was worried of course about online predators. Like most families then, we had AOL. I set up an account for my daughter and when she asked about filling out here profile, I said OK, so long as the last sentence was “My father monitors all activity on this computer.” She of course declined and I was thrilled that nothing more than a screen name showed up that she could share with friends. Unbeknownst to her I also set up a keylogger and after a few weeks found nothing to worry about and deleted it. As she and my son got older and moved into Social Media, I was right there with them making their “friending” me a condition of being on MySpace or Facebook. My part of that agreement was I never did or said anything to embarrass them on their profiles, which I am happy to say I kept. Now that my kids are young adults, I hope they have the good sense to protect their privacy while still enjoying all the benefits of Social Media. It turns out many parents keep tabs on their children on social media sites. This infographic from OnlineSchools shows how parents do so. I commend those parents who find the right balance of online freedom and online supervision.
