Point / Counterpoint
A 14-year-old girl and her mom talk
about blogging
Interview by Larry Magid (http://www.blogsafety.com/givetake1.htm) |
Blogs, or "spaces," have become
extremely popular among teenagers and we thought it would be interesting to get
the perspective of a teenager blog user and her parent. Both mother and
daughter are smart and net savvy and both have put some thought into how to
safely use these services. Still, there are differences between the two of
them; including the girl's willingness to provide personal information that mom
considers to be inappropriate for a public blog. The
questions are in green italics and the answers in standard text.
Susan, 14-Year-Old Daughter
Tell me about some
of the things you put up on your blog that maybe some people might consider
inappropriate.
I do put my first and last name.
I don't write blogs - but I have friends who do - what they put up is what they
did today or how they feel at the time, but it's not, in my opinion, something
anyone would look at and get the wrong impression. In my opinion if you read
someone's blog, then you kind of know that person and, if not, what are you
going to do besides read something that you don't know?
You do put your
first and last name, you put your school and you put photographs of yourself.
Is that right?
Yes I do.
Are you at all
concerned about whether that's appropriate or safe?
I know the risks, and if someone
wants to look at my profile, I let them, but if someone wants to be my friend,
I always check out their profile and make sure I know them before I add them as
a friend. And if someone wants to send me a message, I don't respond to anyone
who I don't know.
When you say
profile, what are the privileges that a member of the general public would have
if you just publish your profile versus making them your friend?
You can have a private profile
where no one can look it unless they're friends, and you can have a public one
where everyone can see it, and the only privilege that a friend has is that
they can post comments on your picture and your profile.
So you're saying
that anything you post on your space is available to anyone in the public.
Yes.
The fact that you put your first
and last name and your school: What do you think are the risks associated with
putting your first and last name?
Personally, I don't see the risks
that much. Like, I know that if a predator wanted to find me, then I guess so,
but you don't see my profile unless you know how to find me. If you type my
name in the search you would see my profile. But who would type it in who
doesn't know me?
What if you typed
in the name of your school, your town and the word "Female?"
Then you'd probably get a
thousand other things. I'm not the only one under those categories and if they
look at my school's name they'd probably get a thousand people there.
But let's say that
I were a predator and I was looking for a girl who went to that high school
because I knew I lived nearby and would have access to her. Could I find you?
Yes.
Does that at all
concern you?
Kind of, but how would they pick
me out of everyone at my school? Like I don't post my schedule or anything and
I know friends who do post their schedules - you can post it, but I just don't.
Would it scare you
if you knew that someone with bad intentions actually confronted someone who
had done exactly what you did?
If I knew the person and was
close to them, kind of, but I do know stories of people who have been sexually
assaulted over the Internet. All I can say is that doesn't always happen. The
person had to be careless to a certain extent. If someone says "meet me here,"
I wouldn't do that, I know that. But I guess, sometimes, the circumstances are
there, but you have to be kind of careless. Information like where you're
going, what you're doing like exact information - "I'm being in the dark corner
of an alley at 3:00 in the morning." That's careless if you say that. But I
don't say anything like where I'm going to be.
Let's talk about
photographs. Tell me about the type of photographs you might put up there.
I like putting up photos of me
just doing random things. I don't have a digital camera, so whatever I can get
I pretty much get. If I'm at a party and a friend takes a picture of me, then I
want to put it up. I like putting pictures of me up that I think are pretty or
make me look good or something. I would not put up any pictures of me like
pornography or anything, and you do have to certify [in, when you post a photo]
that it's not pornography. You can [get around that and] put up porn, but I
don't.
There are degrees
of poses ranging from hard-core pornography, to suggestive facial expressions,
dressing in a certain way that could be suggestive. Where would you draw the
line?
If maybe I am acting a little
sexy in a picture, I'd put it up not to be like "Hey, sexual predators, come to
me," but like maybe as a joke because, yeah, we are like kind of teenagers and
we put up things that maybe we shouldn't, but I feel if I didn't put up that
picture, then regardless of whether a predator wanted me, it's not going to
make a difference.
How old are you?
I'm 14.
How old do you say
you are?
I say that I'm 16 on one site and
14 on the other.
Why do you say
you're 16?
Well, you have to be over 16 to
have an account on this service but it says on my profile that I was born in
'91, so it's not like I'm trying to be 16, it's just that you have to be over a
certain age and until I am that age, I have to be the lowest age possible.
Do you know kids
under 13 who are doing this as well?
Yes, I have friends in 6th and
7th grade who have a blog or space?.
Are you willing to
share your pages with your parents?
No. Because they kind of over
react about everything. That's kind of what I've gotten used to.
Tell me about
overreacting - why is that a problem?
I feel they have told me the
risks and I know what the situation is, and I know as much information as
possible. All they can do is tell me the risk. That's pretty much as far as
what they can do, and I just have to take them into consideration when I put
things on my space.
Do you think your
parents would punish you, perhaps by taking away your Internet privileges or
other privileges if they found you had crossed certain boundaries?
Yes, definitely.
And do you think
that's appropriate parenting?
Well, I don't think they quite
understand the situation half the time. I personally think that they think any
picture of my looking good or even smiling is inappropriate and they probably
think anything on my page is inappropriate, but that's just their mindset. I
don't know if it's good parenting.. I realize the situation and I know that
there are cases where someone has gotten hurt over the Internet. But I'm smart
enough. At least I feel I'm smart enough to know not to meet anyone who comes
to me, not to email or message anyone, not to add people as friends who I don't
know or who could be potentially dangerous, and I always look at other people's
profiles, and - as long as you know the risks - I feel that's kind of all you
can do at the moment.
Joanne,
Susan's Mother
What do you know
about what your daughter is doing on blogs of various kinds?
Very, very little. Not as much as
I'd like to know.
Why don't you know
more about it?
Because she really feels that
that's an invasion of her privacy and she knows what she's doing and it's like
writing in her diary. You know mothers are not supposed to look at their
children's diaries.
Would you look at
her personal diary if you had access to it?
I would ask her permission. I
would not do it without asking her permission.
One difference
between the diary that she might keep in her room and what she's doing on these
spaces is that other people - perhaps not you - but other people can look at
these. Does that concern you at all?
It concerns me a lot because I
think that, being 14 years old, their judgments are not necessarily where they
think their judgments are. In other words, she thinks she's very savvy, that
she knows street smarts and I think that most 14-year-olds think they do but
they don't necessarily know that yet. The fact that she thinks that other
people can't see it unless she gives them permission and when people look at it
they're not going to use it against her - I think it's very naïve.
If you could give
her advice that she would actually take, specifically how would you advise she
go about using or not using services like these.
I would specifically say, "Don't
use services like these and don't put anything personal on there; especially if
it's going to come back and sting you." But until that really stings her she
will keep on doing it. It's like most people. You can tell them they need to do
something else and they don't do that until they get hurt by somebody else and
I think that's when she'll realize it. Something will happen to her and
hopefully it's something minor and then she'll realize that she shouldn't be
putting stuff out there like that - she doesn't like somebody or that somebody
was mean to her, or these things that these girls do to each other. They tend
to be very catty. One day she doesn't like Martha and she puts something bad
out there and one day Martha sees it and gets very angry at her and hates her
but she really didn’t mean it, it's just her expression, and it's already done.
She couldn't take it back.
Do you know if she
puts any information on her site that could possibly identify specifically who
she is?
Yes. I think she puts too much.
She has her name, her last name, her birth date, the city she's in. Some of the
girls put their phone number, but she doesn't do that. Considering that the
city she's in there are only two high schools and she puts everything out
there. She puts down what she likes, colors she likes, what she likes to eat,
what she doesn't like to eat, whether she's single - whatever it is and she has
her pictures out there.
Have you had a
chance to look at any of her pictures?
Yes I have.
Aside from the fact
that they are pictures, is there anything about pictures that concern you?
One thing I do have her do is, I
need to see the site anytime I want to. But I don't see what the other people
write to her about. I don't see the blogs [posts, which only people on Susan's
Friends list can see]. I don't see her expressions on there. I just see her
main site. So I don't know what she's communicating to others, but I do make
her show me what's on there.
And she's OK with
that?
Yes. She'd rather me not and it's
very easy to take something off when your mother wants to see it and put it
back on as soon as your mother goes, and that I have no idea. If I say no in
the house she has access to it at the library, she has access at school, she
has access at friends' houses, so there are a tremendous amount of places she
can get access to it if I said to her that in the house she couldn't do it. And
probably 85% of her friends are online doing this too.
About the photos,
there are two issues. One is that a photograph may make it possible for someone
to identify her, and I've seen photographs on some of these sites that are a
little bit risqué for a young person.
They are definitely risqué, they
definitely want to show off their sexual appeal, they want to show off their
beauty and they sometimes put things on there just to show how outlandish they
can be. They can put them with another woman, they can put them in unusual
positions. She is totally convinced that everybody is doing this, so therefore
what she's doing is just like anyone else. She's not showing off any body
parts, which is true.
So she's fully
clothed?
She's fully clothed like you'd
see her on the street. It's just the way she's posing looks suggestive. Her
facial expressions, her body expressions are very suggestive of 'hey look at
me, I'm sexy, I'm cute, I'm wonderful.
But that isn't
unusual for a 14-year-old girl to be that way, at school, for example?
Right. But they keep it to
themselves. They don't expose the whole world. Plus, the reason they get these
photos on there, it's not the photos I've taken or other people. They have
these cell phones and it's from the cell phone cameras, and they can take them
at any time and any place and put them on the Internet - and that's one of my
concerns too, that these people with cell phones can sometimes take a picture
of you in a revealing position and put it on their Web sites, and you can't do
anything about it.
I'm sure you are a
very responsible mother and probably always had the kids in seat belts or car
seats and have lectured to them about drinking, etc. Do you feel as good a
parent online as you are in the physical world?
Absolutely not. Because I have no
control over it and I have no control over whom she corresponds with and who
she doesn't correspond with. I do trust her judgment, but at some point. You
know, I haven't heard any stories, and this is why she's not afraid. She hasn't
heard any stories of anybody she's close with who has had something happen to
them.
The one thing I
will disclose from my interview with her is that she is aware that there are
some young people that have been molested and exploited.
Definitely, but nobody that she
knows who is her friend who has done it through the Internet at this moment.
But maybe it happened that they don't even happen to it.
There are a lot of
terrible things that have never happened to any of my friends but that doesn't
keep me from worrying about them happening to me. Is that something about youth
that is different from you and me?
Yes. I think so. I think they
believe that they have no vulnerability. That they can do anything that
nothing's going to harm them. They're doing to live forever and ever.
I can see you're a
responsible parent and I also know that you are the mom and sometimes parents
say 'this is the way it's going to be because I'm the mom or I'm the dad.' What
is it that's keeping you from fully implementing the power that you do have as
her legal guardian?
Even if I could control her in
the house. It's like you say to your child when you leave for school you can't
wear anything revealing, you need to wear a sweatshirt but as soon as they
leave the house they take the sweatshirt off and put on a shirt they bought
from somebody else.
It's like the kid
you see with the bicycle helmets around their handlebars.
Exactly. There's no way she goes
out the door without her helmet on but as soon as she gets to that street
corner she can take it off and I can't do anything about this.
How worried are you
and what, if anything, do you think you might want to do about it?
What I would love to do is be
able to put locks on there. I would love to have a parental lock when she's on
there so that I'm on there doing it too, and also have more cases reported
where kids have been exploited by putting their stuff on these places. My
daughter has never been to a chat room - we're very clear she couldn't go to a
chat room, but we haven't heard anything specific about these things, and I
think, if there are things that happen on these sites and those things were
publicized, then I think maybe she'd be afraid about doing it a little more.
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