Having "The Talk" with Your Children

It is one of those cliché parental fears. Having "the talk" with your children. But there's another talk parents should consider having.

In the age of Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Myspace and so on, much of what was once considered the intimate details of people's lives is now public. Though many believe that thinking before posting is common sense, some - in most cases, those who are younger - may not understand the consequences that could come in their actions. Let me give you an example.

A friend of mine has a niece who's 16 years old. One night she was out to dinner with her aunt, uncle and boyfriend at a local pub. Her aunt noticed a man in the corner of the pub, alone, who kept staring at her niece. When the group got up to leave, the aunt and uncle stayed back for a moment and watched as the man got up and followed the young couple out of the restaurant. He began to reach for the girl when the aunt startled him with an, "Excuse me, what are you doing?" The man paused and replied that the young girl had forgotten her digital camera (false.) and he wanted to get it to her.

This may have been just a coincidental, isolated incident. However, if you were to look up the young girl's Facebook profile, you'll notice that her privacy settings are low, her profile pictures are somewhat provocative and her status for that evening was something along the lines of "Out for dinner with (boyfriend's name) at (the pub)!"

I'm not suggesting that helicopter parents are in order for all of the pre-teens/teenagers who are online. However, I believe that moving forward from the days of AIM, parents need to be more proactive in "gently reminding" their loved ones - and perhaps even themselves - that the Internet isn't the place to share their most intimate details. They might even remind them that once it is on the Internet, it is there for good.