Sharing Teens and Tweens

I got Permission from AnnMarie at Tidbits from The Queen of Chaos to share her amazing post.
It fits exactly what I was saying about my 13 year old Daughter in my one post.   You can view her origional post here

I did read this to her and her comments were So I dont Care. I wanted to smack her. She is lucky I didn't t that point in time today. She had to deal with out her phone for most of today and it about killed her.

Anyway here is the amazing post from AnnMarie :)  Thank you so much for allowing me to Share this..  I truly appreciate it and it goes with everything I was saying about my daughter earlier..  

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Dear Teens and Tweens,

As you go back to school, I would like to send you off with a message. Call it advice. Call it insight. Call it anything you want, just please consider what I am about to say to you.

Please be aware of what you are putting out on social media.

You have the daunting task of growing up in a fish bowl. A very public fishbowl. I don’t envy you. I wouldn’t want every mistake I made to be blasted across the internet. I wouldn’t want extremely private things where all the world could see. I wouldn’t want to be caught unexpectedly in a video Vine (phone app of snippets of video that run over and over again) where friends and friends of friends can watch me make a fool of myself over and over again. Unfortunately, this is a time we live in so here is some advice:

1. Not everyone needs to know what you are doing the very minute you are doing it. You don’t need to tweet every emotion you are having the minute you are having it. Some do this solely for attention or to create drama. If you are into that, then by all means go ahead but remember, whether you like it or not, people will form an opinion of you on what your statuses, tweets, Instagrams (picture version of Twitter) or Vines are. You hate the world and wish everyone you know would eat shit? Now all your followers know, and you look like you have anger issues. If one of your followers “favorites” it or “likes” it, then all of their followers gets to see your anger issues as well. One tweet that I recently saw was, “I’ll never love anyone like I loved you. You broke my heart and I’ll never be the same. Why would you do that to me?” I bet she is going to have guys lined up at the door waiting to date her because she sounds pretty stable, right? You think it’s private or only who you want to see it, sees it but you are wrong.

2. You might think a foul mouth makes you cool. Dropping the f-bomb in every other tweet makes you feel like a grown-up. Whatever. I can curse with the best of them. It’s a terrible habit but something about seeing those words in writing for everyone to read makes me want to say, how about not doing it so often? I might be the minority but it makes you look like a punk when you do that. That goes for offensive things, too. If you think someone is being stupid or dorky or a jerk, say those words.  Don’t call someone something offensive instead of calling him/her a friend just because you think it’s okay. It’s not. I get it. You are just having fun. You like to joke around and you think you are saying something funny like “I’d hit that” or “She’s got a nice ass.” You might even like to give your friends a hard time and tweet, “Todd the Teen likes to have sex with animals. Hide your dogs” or “Tina the Teen just farted and it smells awful.” Guess what? All of your followers just read that and chances are a lot of them are also teens so they thought it was hilarious so they retweeted it or shared it and now all of their followers get to read that. Not private.

3. Be mindful of the places you go and the people you choose to hang around with. Maybe you don’t go on Vine or Instagram but if you are at a party with someone obsessed with those, guess what? Chances are, you are going to show up on Instagram or Vine. When I was younger, if I was at a party where there was alcohol, no one was snapping pictures or taking video of the idiots that were drunk. Now, just go on either of these and you’ll see plenty because kids don’t get that it isn’t private. Even if you aren’t doing anything wrong and just hanging with friends at these parties, if someone snaps a picture, they have proof you were there and you might suffer the consequences if the ship is going down. Make sure that the people you are with are ones that have your back and won’t think it is hilarious to make a fool out of you and then post it for the world to see.

4. Remember when you are texting that it is totally not private. The iPhone has a screen shot thing that can take a picture of what is on your screen and then you can share it with anyone you want or the person you are texting can share it with whomever they want. What you thought was a private conversation is now going to ruin your reputation because you trusted the wrong person. I can’t stress this enough. You put it in writing, it is out there forever. You might delete it but the person you sent it too might not or they might but not before they took a picture and saved it.

5. You know what happens to teens (really all people) that get drunk or wasted? They do dumb things like take video of themselves saying, “I am so wasted.” Don’t do that. With a zero tolerance policy, you’re playing with fire and you look like an idiot. By the way, you aren’t fooling anyone with the tweets that say, “I don’t remember anything that happened last night.”

6. There are certain things that you should never ever post or tweet or even text because they are private. If you have a boyfriend or girlfriend the whole world doesn’t need to know when you make out or hook up. The interwebs don’t need to know what a great kisser your boyfriend is. The best thing you can do is have a relationship that doesn’t involve social media. If you like a girl, pick up the phone and call her. Go to her house and spend some time with her. If you like a boy, spend time face to face with him. Practice the art of playing hard to get. It might be old-fashioned but throwing yourself at a guy over texting isn’t attractive and coming from the mom of a teen boy, they don’t like it either. Remember that there is courage behind the screen so don’t text something that you wouldn’t say directly to the person (or that you wouldn’t say in front of your parents).

I am guilty of 7 myself but that is only texting when i am in the same room as my husband especially if I want to tell him something with out 3 kids having to get into every conversation that I am trying to have with him. Especially when it comes to birthday parties and what we plan on doing.   

7. When you are in a room full of people, TALK to them. It is still rude to look at your phone while someone is speaking to you and texting someone who is sitting across from you is the equivalent of whispering something to someone in front of someone else. It’s rude.

8. When your parents tell you that colleges and companies look at your social media to see what kind of person you are, they aren’t lying. Click here to see how colleges are using social media for admissions. What you think is cool or funny today, might actually shut a lot of doors for you in the future.

To wrap this up, this isn’t to say that I don’t understand that you are young and want to have fun. I really, really get that. Just don’t put it on social media for the world to see. Making mistakes is inevitable. Making them on a public forum doesn’t have to be.

Please be aware of what you put on social media.

Sincerely,

A concerned parent afraid that social media is going to be the downfall of this generation

*Disclaimer: The tweets referenced in this post were from me checking Nico’s. I have no idea who the people are other than they are guys and girls he knows and he either follows them or retweeted or made it a favorite. They were not his but I have been known to text him, “Stop using the f-word on Twitter”.

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When it comes to this and my Tween.. She has every social media site you can think of and then some. Honestly.. It is alittle too much.. Especially when she shares her conversations with her friends on Instagram.
I get on her constently about that.  She is always telling me that she knows all of the 700 people following her but seriously I doubt that.  

Anyways I just wanted to share.. Happy Reading