Guidance regarding a tween's internet usage

There's no winning on some of this. Facebook, I believe, no longer allows pseudonyms. You can insist on being her friend on facebook, until she figures out how to set up another account you know nothing about. I'm not sure a 12 year old has a right to that kind of privacy -- ie. That you shouldn't have her passwords. Afterall, what she does on line isn't private. On the other hand, you don't want to push her to learn to become more sneaky. You want to go in and set the privacy restrictions and recheck them every few weeks (since the policies seem to change often). We just had a problem with some other kid writing something assholish and explicit on our kid's wall. We made her delete it and she was subjected to a couple of lectures. This was my two cents: 1) what I want you to know is, that guys who treat women badly are not strangers calling you over from the other side of a chainlink fence. They're going to be from among your friends. And its going to be really disappointing. There are also, among your friends, guys who treat women awesome. 2) I'm willing to allow a slim margin of possibility that this kid was joking (your father is not), that he was in some way making a comment about "guys who say that sort of thing". Here's the problem with that. You can't make that kind of joke in public. You think, when you're on facebook, that you're in a room with your friends with the door closed. You're not. You're on the corner of the street with a megaphone. You deleted that comment -- but it still exists on the internet. And you're only ever one screenshot away from it going around your school. If you can't tell that kid not to put shit like that on your wall, then he's not your friend. And I don't mean '"he's not a good friend" I mean he shouldn't be in your facebook universe.

Ask your daughter for password retrieval information for important accounts. This way, you have an override key which lets you access her accounts in case of an emergency, but it's something with a clear trail where she knows you have accessed her accounts. This gives you the same idea as the piggy bank, but it also ensures you won't be locked out due to the password having been changed in the meantime, whether intentionally or required by password expiration. You also get the upside of having the ability to stand in the way of the account if something is going on and say "We need to talk about this" rather than being brushed off without any substantial discussion over the matter. Do teach her how to be tech savvy. Even the most well intentioned person can hand out the wrong info to the wrong people with one good phishing attempt. Open communication and trust where she knows you're not going to pry without reason and you aren't going to do it behind her back will help you a lot more than a technological edge. Using tech based solutions recklessly will only breed mistrust, resentment, and greater efforts to hide everything regardless of how innocent or dubious it may be.

At thirteen i had early internet. my parents had no idea what I was getting into and didn't even know how to ask. I am so glad uploading photos was too much of a pain in the ass in 1995. Having her passwords for emergencies is a good idea, but making it a general rule that if possible, you're going to have her open up her email and sit with you while you look if there is ever a reason. With facebook, explaining that you need to be able to see all of her feed, but promising not to comment (and/or embarrass her) is a decent compromise. Introducing her to the way-back machine, showing her and really pushing that "once on the internet, always on the internet" and showing her how creepy it can be seems to be the most important. Showing her screenshot websites that look for embarrassing content and talking about how people break confidences (I'm trying to think of less skeezy example than Anthony Wiener and failing here) so that she understands that it's not you being paranoid and so she understands the logic behind content rules.

oh god. just disable any web cams when you're not around.

Tell her to behave as though any photos or words she puts online will be there forever. The photos would be the main thing at her age, but as she gets more mature she might need to know about the value of using a pseudonym. I used Livejournal, and even in my early 20s the friendly atmosphere of social sites like that makes it easy to forget that you aren't just chatting with friends but potentially putting stuff out there for everyone to see. Also, based on seeing my teen nephews on Facebook - romantic arguments are probably a good example of this. Not dignfied at the time, embarrassing later. Openbook would be a good website to show her things like this. She might not be dating yet, but she might argue 'publically' with friends.

Complication: I am the non-custodial parent, and I get to see her on Friday evenings and Saturday during the day. When she's with me it's largely fun time, i.e. videogame time. You can't do much about her online presence the other six nights of the week; her father is going to be more important in this regard. Keep an eye on her, wait to see whether she ever changes her passwords, and watch for signs (mood changes, quick screen hiding, etc.) that things may (or may not) be going the way you want them to go. Remind her about the most important stuff (be wary of strangers, don't hand out your real address, no real-world meetups with people she knows only through the net unless you get to go with her, and never ever ever give racy pictures to anyone even if he's her one and only life-long love and future husband). Let her know she can always stop, that it's never too late to back out of anything she has been talked into, and that you would feel happy and honored if she came to you every time she didn't know what to do about something. One of the most important things you could teach her about the net is how to walk away from it. Do things together offline. Try to change your situation to something more like "When she's with me it's largely fun time, i.e. outdoors time, old movies time, going to concerts time, time for visiting friends, time for talking about school and romance and life." And though you might not want her to hide away and read by herself the whole time she's with you, it would be very cool if you could both read the same books at the same time during the week and have something else to talk about when she comes over every Friday. Let her pick a book (maybe with your help), buy two copies, and keep in touch during the week to make sure you're both reading it. If it's something she has to read for school, you'll be encouraging her to do her reading and you'll be ready to coach her with related homework. When she looks back on her teen years, she will remember the things you two did together, not the umpteenth Minecraft session.

When my kids were younger I http://www.metafilter.com/92015/Your-life-is-an-Open-Book#3092963 on the computer they used. I suppose it had a little bit to do with what they were doing, or just in case they started chatting with a pervert, but mostly it was to stay on top of the constantly changing privacy settings on myspace & then facebook (& now google). At 10, 12, even 14 they couldn't be expected to regularly go in and check/reset their privacy settings or even to understand what different privacy settings meant. Facebook is unavoidable right now. My son learns of theater auditions, snow days, etc. only through facebook, not email or text ... he closed his fb account for most of last semester and was weirdly out of the loop for both social and school-related events. It may not be facebook in a few years when your daughter is in high school, but it will be social media of one kind or another, and I think it's important for parents to keep kids from becoming commodities for as long as possible. My kids knew that nothing they did online was private. No computers in bedrooms, no clearing the cache, assuming I could read anything they wrote. But it was never a "punishment" or a scare tactic or anything negative, it was just the way we did things. My internet use was also public. I would definitely have her change her passwords regularly. Remember that you are not only protecting her when she is young, you are also teaching her the habits she'll take with her when she's grown. My kids have 3 email addresses: one is their personal email (which they never use ... facebook is their default email of choice), one is a junk email for amazon, itunes, etc. purchases (that's where all the spam goes), and the third is issued through their school. Definitely keep talking with her dad about safe/sensible screen-time. It's important that you are on the same page and the rules will change all the time, as she grows up and with each new tech development. Kids are savvy and will take advantage if the rules are less strict at one parent's house than the other's. When she's with me it's largely fun time, i.e. videogame time. It could also be boardgame time, or tennis time, or toenail-painting time, or other nonscreen time.

"Don't look at all, and don't worry, just trust her as she seems emotionally healthy and not distraught over any social issues with friends. Keep an eye on these things in case they change." Just FYI, the kids who are in anguish are BEING bullied; the cyber-bullies are not usually showing stress but can get expelled (and, increasingly, prosecuted) for that sort of behavior. I don't have teenagers, but I expel teenagers, and I don't think waiting for them to show stress at home is a good strategy for telling that all is well on the internet. We've had some "good kids" who showed no signs get into ENORMOUS trouble over their cyber-bullying. Sometimes good kids, or kids who are traditional targets, realize cyber-bullying is a way to strike at those they dislike from arm's length, without the social risk of doing it in person. It can quickly end up in problematic territory. (That said, I don't know the right way for parents to handle it -- but I have not seen ignoring it and hoping for the best be a terribly successful strategy.) Most of my friends who have teenagers, the teens are facebook friends with their aunts and uncles, older cousins, adults they babysit for, close friends of their parents -- this seems to dampen down some of the worst facebook behavior. They CAN use private messages or limited posts, of course, but they can't just post thoughtlessly and they're more aware of what others are posting on their walls and so on because there's an adult presence. There's also then a "village" of adults who are loosely following their exploits and may notice when there's trouble (online or emotional). (One night at 2 a.m. I was surfing facebook while breastfeeding the baby, and I happened to see my friend's daughter post WAY TOO MUCH BOOB so I texted her immediately and the picture was down within 15 minutes. She told me the next day that I and another friend both texted her at the same minute about it so her phone was going crazy and woke her up.) All of my friends' kids who are on facebook are required to be friends with their parents. The adults mostly do not post on the kids' pages or statuses except to say "congrats" or "happy birthday"; I think if the adults were overinvolved in the kids' FB, that would be hard/weird, but just being observers is okay.

The best way, I feel, to approach this is to let her know, it doesn't matter how many people are giving their real name. Always pick a unique cyber name, that you, as the parent, also know about and let that be her online identity. Never give out a home address or real name, so that means avoiding social networking websites such as FB or buying anything online. If she is to share pictures, she should at a minimal. Keep herself mysterious, so this way she doesn't confuse her cyber world with the real world. That's how I did it when I started using the web around her age. Every time I posted or made a website it was always under my cyber name. I remember only one time ever posting a photo of myself until college with FB. If I chatted with adults, I used my cyber name, always. The online friends I made, took a long time for them to even know my first name, let alone see a photo. You need to come with that mindset and she also needs to adopt that too, to protect herself.