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“Get a life!” It may sound harsh,
but if your young teenager is
spending hours each day on
social networking sites like Facebook and
MySpace, it might be what he or she needs
to hear.
“Kids need to experience going outside,
playing basketball, walking in the park, taking
a bike ride,” says Nick Burrows, a guidance
director at Edgewood High School,
Madison. “Kids need some down time to get
with their friends and be creative.”
“People are spending too much time in
front of the computer social networking and
not living,” adds Colleen Stilson, the computer
tech teacher at Thomas Jefferson
Middle School, Madison. “The Internet is
fantastic but people are getting obsessive
with their personal pages.”
She hopes that kids’ “addictions” to
maintaining their pages and chatting online
is a fad that will wane, but until that happens,
it’s a hot topic in the classes she teaches.
It’s a small world
“I always tell the kids that anything they
put out there they should be comfortable
showing their parents. If they’re not comfortable
doing that, it’s probably not appropriate
to put out there,” says Stilson. “The world is
smaller than they think and it always comes
back to them. It’s not private; it’s not anonymous.”
Because of that, she encourages parents
to look at their children’s online pages guiltfree.
“It’s not a diary,” she reminds those
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who may feel like they’re snooping. “It’s
between them and the world.”
“Parents need to monitor their kids’
online networking the best they can,” agrees
Burrows. “That’s not the easiest thing to do
without feeling like you’re snooping. But
you should keep asking questions.”
And set limits. Stilson and Burrows both
suggest an hour per day maximum of online
social networking. However, enforcing that
can be tricky.
“The kids are going to say they’re doing
their homework, but they might write one
sentence for their essay, then go back to
Facebook,” says Stilson. Keeping computers
out of the bedroom can help. “If they’re in a
public space, you can walk by and see that
they’re working on that essay.”
Stilson suggests unplugging the Internet
once in awhile. “We’re not letting kids play,”
she worries. “We’re going to have a bunch of
kids who only know how to communicate in
cyberspace. If kids spend all their time
online they’re going to grow up and only
want to visit with friends online instead of
going to restaurants and movies.”
Not all bad
Our experts agree that social networking
has its positive aspects. For example, “it’s a
great way to keep in touch with friends and
family who move away,” says Stilson.
“Kids can feel a part of something that
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they might not otherwise,” Burrows says of
those with low self-esteem or who might
have trouble making friends. “Instead of not
being called on the phone and feeling like
they don’t have friends, social networking
has opened the door for some kids and
helped their self-esteem.”
Of course, they also might be the most
vulnerable when teens get nasty or gang up
on each other online.
“For the most part, I think online social
networking has motivated teens to become
more savvy with technology,” says Molly
Tormey, an eighth-grade language arts
teacher at Thomas Jefferson. “They are
exposed to text more than they were previously.
With more Internet access, and comfort
with computers, some kids are accessing
and reading much more information than
they had previously. This is especially true
for students who tend not to read books for
pleasure.”
But are kids un-learning how to write
properly? “The abbreviations for texting and
IMing sometimes carry over into school
assignments on drafts, but for the most part,
kids still know the standard English rules of
writing,” Tormey adds.
So don’t unplug the computer for good.
“You need to talk about balance with your
kids,” says Burrows. “Computers are good,
but the balance has got to be there. Suggest
simple things — going for a walk, going
fishing. If you dabble in that a little, you can
have some balance.”
Madison writer and editor
Debra Illingworth Greene
thinks Facebook is fun, but
prefers to do most of her living
in the “real” world. She
tries to model this for her
teen and pre-teen.
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