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An uneasy dance: Parents and teens both are seeking ways to coexist peacefully on the few social networks they do share.
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Carly and her mom are friends on Facebook, but that doesn't mean they share everything.
The 17-year-old from
Marin County, California, has refined her Facebook privacy settings so
that her mother can't see all the posts that fill her Timeline. Her
father, meanwhile, never checks the social network.
"Right now, my mom can
only see things that I post. She can't see anything I'm tagged in or
anything that my friends say to me on my profile," said Carly, a high
school senior who asked to be identified only by her first name. "She
doesn't know that, though. I'm like, 80% sure that every other teenager
has done that too."
With teen-agers and their
parents (grandparents, even) increasingly active on social networks,
both generations are joined in a delicate dance over privacy, safety and
freedom of expression online.
Interviews with a handful
of teens and adults suggest that some teens seek out corners of social
media where they can communicate with their friends and peers away from
the watchful eye, or embarrassing comments, of their parents.
Parents, meanwhile, are
grappling with how to monitor their kids' online activity and keep them
safe without being stifling or intrusive. And both are seeking ways to
coexist peacefully on the few social networks they do share.
Reputation is everything
Today's teenagers are
social media natives. They've grown up putting their personal
information online and are comfortable sharing photos and videos of
themselves, updating relationship statuses and checking into locations.
What they don't share
their parents' level of concern about privacy and worries about
companies or the government abusing their data. According to a recent study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, only 9% of teens reported being "very concerned" about third parties accessing their data.
That doesn't mean
they're reckless with their personal information, according to Pew
research. Most teens exert careful control over what information is seen
by whom, but more because they are acutely aware of how each nugget of
posted information, even the number of likes it can get, shapes how they
are perceived by peers.
Pew found that teens
have developed a variety of ways to control their privacy. They are
comfortable navigating Facebook's notoriously complicated privacy
settings, and only 14% have public-facing Facebook profiles. They also
edit what appears on their profile, deleting posts, comments and
unwanted tags.
For teens looking to
hide social-media activity from adults, elaborate privacy settings can
sometimes be unnecessary. Fifty-eight percent of teens said they posted
updates that were inside jokes or coded messages that only certain
friends would understand.
Seeking out new online homes
Many teens are learning
how to compartmentalize the different parts of their lives online.
Facebook is the most popular site for both teens and parents, according
to Pew, but teens reported "waning enthusiasm" in the site in Pew focus
groups. They cited the colonization of the site by adults and excessive
amounts of "drama."
Some teens use Facebook
for public posts but message each other on lesser-known social platforms
that their parents aren't aware of or haven't signed up for.
Many teens are also on
Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Vine and Pinterest -- sites where they
report feeling less social pressure and more freedom to express
themselves. Twitter has seen rapid growth among young users, while Vine,
with its looping six-second videos, is a creative form of messaging for
a visually oriented generation.
Even straight-laced
LinkedIn is courting teenagers. Earlier this month the social media site
for professionals lowered its minimum age to 14 from 18 and announced
special new pages for universities, hoping to edge into the
college-selection process.
If teenagers really
don't want something to be seen, they'll retreat to more private
messaging tools such as Kik, WhatsApp or Snapchat, which can be used to
send private messages to groups of friends. SnapChat is a mobile app
which lets users share photos or videos that disappear after a few
seconds. For that reason, it's gained a reputation for promoting the exchange of risqué images.
"On Snapchat ...
anything goes!" said Carly, the Bay Area teen. "Snapchat gets a little
crazier because it's supposed to be 'erased' after 10 seconds or less.
Not sure if that's actually true, but there's definitely a different
sense of security with Snapchat than Facebook or Instagram."
Making peace with parents
Some kids and parents say they have worked out ways to share social networks harmoniously.
According to the recent
Pew study, only 5% of teens reported setting up filters for their
parents, and the majority (70%) are friends with their parents on
Facebook.
Julie LaRue and her 16-year-old daughter are both mainly on Facebook, but the two have agreed on some boundaries.
"Her ground rule for me
is to not comment on her friends' comments unless they are directed to
me, and not to tag her in photos without her consent," said LaRue, who
lives in Baldwinsville, New York.
LaRue also stays off of
her daughter's other social networks, including Tumblr, Twitter and
DeviantArt. In exchange, her daughter is heeding her warnings against
sharing personal information online and has promised not to post any
photos she wouldn't be comfortable showing her parents.
Along the same lines,
Carly's mom will tag her daughter in photos and like her posts, but she
doesn't comment much because she knows it's embarrassing to her
daughter.
Carly, for her part, tries to keep it clean.
"I really try to not
have any pictures of me from any parties or any captions/comments with
swear words ... but it's hard to be 100% clean when your entire life is
online," she said.
CNN
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