Social media smarts for teens

Jul 21, 2010 by

teen-age-fan-club
Image by bass_nroll via Flickr

This past weekend I was fortunate to be asked to present a series of seminars on Social Media Smarts for Teens at Morry’s Camp, a wonderful program for youth development that attracts kids from all over New York and Connecticut.   It was a great experience on a number of levels.  First of all, I haven’t been in a classroom of kids in a long time, and it was exhilarating (and exhausting) to connect with kids from grades 6-11 on a subject I feel that I know pretty well and that I can get pretty animated about.  Second, they seemed to actually listen to what I had to say and they had great questions for me and brought their own real-life examples into the mix.  And third,  preparing for the sessions was a great way for me to look at social media from a different perspective – not from my jaded I-read-social-media-pundit-blogs-daily point-of-view, but through the lens of everyday users, many of whom are just starting to explore the connections and social capabilities that these platforms have to offer.

I put a lot of time into thinking about both the smart ways to engage in social media and also the safety issues that teens might run into when they start Facebooking, Tweeting or posting videos to YouTube.  I wanted to provide constructive how-tos for them and some positive ways to engage, but did also want to scare them just a tiny bit – so I did tell them some horror stories about people who have not gotten offered jobs or who have been fired for their social media activities.  We also talked about physical safety concerns, like not friending anyone online who you don’t actually know in real life, and never meeting people in real life that you only know online.  Some of these thoughts made me think back to my own early internet experiences making friends on AOL – the issues and concerns are really very much the same.

Though I presented the seminars without a computer (camp is pretty low-tech) and used Word handouts, I’ve compiled all of the info into the following Powerpoint presentation so that others who need to discuss this subject with teens in their lives can make use of it.

Social Media Smarts for Teens

Do you have a teen in your life that uses social media?  Do you have an opportunity to influence them in any way? If so, please share the advice you’ve given them in the comments below.

Enhanced by Zemanta

No related posts.

Related Posts

Tags

Share This

  • http://www.socialinsights.com.au steve macalpine

    Hi Stephanie,
     I’ll be sharing this with my 13 yr old princess. It’s funny how they can take advice from a stranger but not from a Dad who earns his living in the social space ;-(

    all the best!

  • Christina S.

    This is all very sage advice. As a mother of a teen ager and a soon-to-be-teenager, I can not stress the importance of talking with your children and teens about safety in social media.

    Parenting in today's times is much different than when we were growing up. In my own childhood, we had one phone in the house, usually kept in the common area. If you were lucky enough to have a phone in your room, it surely wasn't a private line! This meant open monitoring of peer communication as well as limitations such as length of conversations and time of conversation.

    Between the Internet and smart phones, our children have nearly 24/7 access to their peer groups and it is much more difficult to monitor. My children don't like it, but we have parental monitors on their computers. It is also a “house rule” that all social media account log in credentials must be provided to us (and yes, we do log in as them and check up on their activities – but we never impersonate them). Additionally, our mobile provider allows us to see all of the activity on their mobile accounts.

    We've discussed some of the same issued you addressed in your presentation, especially driving home the fact that colleges and potential employers will look for you in social media venues. We've tried to boil it all down to one simple concept: When you post something on Facebook, Photobucket, MySpace, etc., you no longer own that piece of information. Even if you take it down, someone may have saved that embarrassing picture, inappropriate status update, etc., and has the ability to repost it at will.

    Thanks for the post. I'll definitely be sharing this one!

  • Pingback: Tweets that mention Social media smarts for teens | Stephanie Schwab: Socialologist -- Topsy.com