Privacy Blogged

Worry not about what your country knows about you, but what your parents can find out via Facebook.

It’s a whole new world out there. Parents no longer have to spend time frequenting small-town coffee shops or calling their neighbors to keep tabs on their children, they just climb up their child’s wall. It takes a little more brain power, but difficult has always been inherent to parenting and we can best this challenge. (The hacking services of the tattle-tale tween sibling can be bought cheap.)

Teens have always felt impervious to everything and that hasn’t changed. They are the untouchables, invincible and indestructible like Superman, and like that superhero, they are most vulnerable to the patently obvious. I hear stories of teen after teen who have been shutdown, cut off, timed out—deleted for infractions that they, themselves memorialized for posterity on their personal wall space. (FYI, Underage biting of beer cans online will get your wall deleted and you grounded until the warmth of spring comes.)

Parents have the ace in the hole, the kryptonite, a one-up on the teen game. This is something teens can never wrap their minds around, something they can never hope to understand, because it cuts right to the heart and cannot be circumvented. We were once them and that means they can't win.

However, they are not left totally bereft, without hope or abandoned, we offer them the same tools our parents offered us—the best was a gift of advice, “Choose your friends wisely.” (Smart friends don’t post photos of friend’s transgressions or discuss last night’s illegal party antics online to invite peer review.)

Such is the power of the net to teach lessons. This generation has redefined the basic right of privacy as they revel in public forum of their lives. They offer it up to be previewed by the masses. Now, every public place is monitored and every act in schools, malls, and offices is scrutinized and it’s a great preparer for the future.

Worry not about what your parents find out on your wall, but what your employer knows about your eclectic collections and choice in bath fixtures.