0 to 5 Articles - Parents Behaving Badly Online

Most discussion about children and social networking focuses on helping children avoid the pitfalls and perils of online forums, chatrooms, and websites like Facebook. But here I want to talk about the other side of the coin – social networking for parents. The average age of a Facebook user now hovers around 40, and one of the fastest growing demographics is the over 50s – that’s a lot of parents and grandparents logging on. Many young parents today have grown up accustomed to posting information online about what they did on the weekend, complete with photo gallery. Parenting forums have thrived as parents turn to online sources for advice and support. But how well do we, the parents, have a handle on how to share information about our own children on social networking sites?

Writers have had to grapple with this issue since autobiography was invented, and some of them have done it better than others. But nowadays, everyone has the opportunity to jump online and share revealing information about their children. Funny photos that once were saved for the embarrassing slide show at the 21st birthday party can now be put online for permanent display. The normal parental discussions about behaviour worries and medical matters that were once held over a cup of tea at the kitchen table are now committed to writing and saved for posterity on computer servers.

Not only does online content have a tendency to hang around longer than you’d like, it can also be removed from its original context and end up being seen under different circumstances and by quite different audiences. For example, turning to fellow parents for advice and support in dealing with parenting challenges is quite reasonable. But if that same information is one day accessed by classmates or employers, it can take on an entirely different character, providing ammunition for bullying or discrimination.

One of the problems with Facebook is how easy it is to forget that it is a broadcast medium. It’s easy to imagine that your status update or photo is going to the small group of people you regularly interact with on the site. However, unless you’ve been really clever and consistent with your privacy settings, it’s actually being sent out to a much larger group, including that person you went to primary school with, current and former colleagues, distant rellies you never speak to – the entire miscellaneous group of friends and acquaintances you’ve connected to on the site. Are these really people who deserve such intimate access to the lives of your children?

While Facebook encourages you to identify yourself, parenting forums have their own collection of acronyms (DD for darling daughter, DS for darling son, etc) to permit anonymous discussion. But maintaining genuine anonymity requires constant discipline. Just one post that includes potentially identifying information can unlock your identity for everything you’ve ever posted under that pseudonym. And you never know who’s reading – being vague enough to prevent a stranger from tracking you down is one thing; but discussing an argument with an in-law or getting advice on a schooling issue in such a way that the people involved won’t be able to tell it’s you and your children is very difficult indeed.

Given this site has a forum dedicated to the discussion of children aged under 5, it's something we expect to come up repeatedly. Forum participants are required to register, but we don't ask for personal information, and we encourage users to be discreet. Do you think this is something we need to be concerned about? Have you seen cases where online discussions has caused problems? What kinds of guidelines do you use for your own online behaviour?, Does it make a difference whether you are participating as a parent or a professional?

Make comments or discuss this on our forum…