Social Media and Your Child

The Times has what could be considered a somewhat funny kind of "whoops" story except that the bigger issue of social media and your child is more sobering.

The story is about Miss Seattle, Jean-Sun Hannah Ahn.  She won her crown last Saturday. The next day reporter Linda Thomas from KIRO-FM posted a story about Ms. Ahn's Twitter postings from a couple of months back.

Apparently, Ms. Ahn, who is from Mukilteo, had gone to school in Arizona and now finds Seattle, well, rainy.  She also finds many people and situations "annoying."  The story ran on more than 240 news sites.

So this is no big deal except for what comes later in the story.

But we just keep tweeting and Facebooking away, many of us not worrying that those embarrassing tweets and photos never go away or that they can ultimately mean loss of a job, not being accepted into a particular college and, in certain spectacular situations, becoming a national laughingstock.

Now it's one thing if you are an adult.  But kids?  They just don't know how easily information on the web can follow you around.  Deleting tweets does NOT make them go away forever if they are cached somewhere else.

To whit:

But what might seem funny at age 19 might not translate so well, especially when applying to a college.
A 2011 survey by Kaplan Test Prep, the education company, of college-admission officers showed that 24 percent of them had gone to an applicant's Facebook or other social-networking page.
And, says Kaplan, 12 percent of admissions officers said that what they found negatively impacted the applicant's admissions chances including "vulgarities" and "alcohol consumption in photos and 'illegal activities.' "

An MSNBC story last week said "student-athletes in colleges around the country also are finding out they can no longer maintain privacy in Facebook communications because schools are requiring them to 'friend' a coach or compliance officer, giving that person access to their 'friends-only' posts."

Case in point about social media, again, comes to us locally:

That's advice that should have been followed by the three legislative aides fired in December from the Washington, D.C., office of Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Lake Stevens.

The congressman sacked them after tweets became public that called him "idiot boss" and further proclaimed: "showed up this morning at 9:00am with shots of Jack. What a glorious and frightening way to kick off the month."

"Dear taxpayers — I hope you don't mind that I'm watching YouTube clips of Nirvana at my government job. Thanks, you're the best."

When I was co-president at Roosevelt, I had written an article for the parent newsletter on this issue.  Students can lose job opportunities, internships and possibly admission to a college or university for what they tweet or post on Facebook.   I can only imagine being 12, 14, 16 and having a lot of fun sending silly tweets or dopey photos.

The problem is none of it is private.  It's one of the joys/problems of a modern age.

What was interesting is that when I wrote my article, I got some feedback from parents whose students said it isn't fair for colleges or employers to check their social media output.

Kids, life isn't fair and if you are trying to pick between two people, who would you hire?  The person with the once-a-week drunk girl pictures or the guy whose Facebook updates are all about his volunteer service?

My kids just beat this issue by a few years but I know many of you have young students.  Help them, protect them and guide them on this issue.