As many of you would have learned, there is some concern about the use/abuse of Facebook and other social networking sites by our children.
What do parents feel about this? What do they know? And what about the children? Are they aware of how the social networking sites manipulate people and data?
Some discussion on this matter would be good.
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9 comments:
The kids are smart enough to fill up their wrong date of birth to open an account in facebook, since it does not allow below 18 years to do so. Parents or elder peers may be helping them knowingly or unknowingly. In many universities and schools all social networking sites are being blocked at the server level itself. Let's all be very strict with that.
We must thank the school for at waking up to the fact that there may face book may not be good for our children.
I know of a large
number of children who are spending a lot of their free time on it .
I dont know how they are going to react to this.
I hope this issue has been debated and the pros and con discussed before this ban is imposed--otherwise we will be having a bigger problem in hand by driving this underground.
Dear Parents,
Please visit this link and secure your facebook account and make sure your kids do it too.
http://www.allfacebook.com/2009/02/facebook-privacy.
ALSO: Facebook has agreed to let third party advertisers use your posted pictures without your permission. Click on "Settings" up at the top where you see the "Logout" link. Select "Privacy". Then select "News Feed and Wall". Next, select the tab that reads "Facebook Ads". In the drop down box, select "No One". Then save your changes. Do it NOW.
It would be a good idea to revive the 'Moral science' period which some of us had when we were in school. It need not be a 'moral policing period' but help the children distinguish between right and wrong. In today's nuclear homes where both the parents are off to work, the children do not really get counselling from responsible elders. The sessions could be made interesting with stories and the messages.
You will be happy to know that we, JaagoTeens, have begun counselling MIS children about being safe on the internet. This August, we began conducting workshops for 7th and 8th standard. While it is not possible, nor advisable, to altogether clamp down on internet usage - whether for email or social networking or anything else - what we can do is to guide them, make them aware of the importance of SAFE usage of the net.
The feeling of anonymity is so great that children do not fully realize that some persons they meet online may not be who they say they are. We are stressing the importance of online privacy and online behaviour - netiquette, and making them aware of cyber-bullying and online predators.
Incidentally, we at JaagoTeens need volunteers! For this, and for any other information, please feel free to contact us at leena@jaagoteens.com or usha@jaagoteens.com or jaagoteens@gmail.com
Hey! The JaagoTeens is a good site. I would strongly recommend the net-savvy and the not-so-net-savvy parents to check it out and become members! Just the site where all your net-concerns may get answered!
Jaagoteens is an absolutely super idea...Just when the doctor ordered!
The teachers and parents should go through it and advise their children during the counselling period.
Our children for some reason love anonymity. You must see some of the usernames that they use. Ughh! Scary! I also noticed that after the 'Arushi murder' so many of the eighth graders sported the 'Arushi look' on their facebook accounts.
I would strongly urge parents to befriend their children and see for themselves the language that the kids use or the videos that they watch!
Its really sad that in spite of so much being said, the school has still not done much in terms of educating the kids about this. All that seems to have been done is one announcement in the assembly saying that children from class VI and VII should not be using facebook!
Great News!
JaagoTeens has been received very enthusiastically by the school. In fact, the first workshop happened for the class 8 kids a week ago and the next one is scheduled for next thursday(5th Nov) at the MIS AV room at 11 AM. Parents, please do join in, understand the issues and help in this endeavor. Volunteers to spread this message are welcome.
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