Teens Hiding Secrets on Twitter

Are teens giving fake updates on their Facebook accounts so parents won’t know what they are up to? Teens are getting savvier when it comes to the web and wanting more privacy from their parents. They know that many parents have Facebook accounts and they can check up on them through Facebook. So teens are jumping over to Twitter knowing that many parents don’t have accounts and aren’t as familiar with how Twitter works.

On Twitter, teens can choose if they want everyone to see their tweets or only a specific group of friends.  This gives teens an advantage to hide certain activities from prying eyes. Many teens set their privacy settings to only allow a close circle of friends to receive their tweets. Furthermore, teens can use anonymous handles and set-up multiple accounts specifying which friends receive which tweets.

The question is, how much privacy should teens have in the digital age?

Chatroulette

Has your tween mentioned Chatroulette to you or have you heard your tween talking about it amongst friends?  It has been around for a couple of years now, but lately I have been hearing tweens talking about it and are very curious on what it is all about. Chatroulette is a free website that lets you chat with random strangers face-to-face from all over the world on your smartphone or computer webcam. Visitors who enter the site can either text, audio or video conversations with random strangers. If someone doesn’t like the conversation then the visitor can move onto the next stranger by pressing “next.”

The website now wants users to be at least 18 years old and prohibits any type of pornographic behavior. In addition, if users experience harassment or witness illegal or pornographic activities, users can report the offending user. If three users complain about the same offending user within 5 minutes, then that user is banned from the service and directed to the adult-only version of Chatroulette.

Bottom line, Chatroulette is not appropriate for tweens or teens. To help protect your tween or teen from using this site, parents can disable the webcam on the computer and laptops. These types of apps can be downloaded onto cell phones also, so parents can block these apps.and websites a with parental monitoring software such as My Mobile Watchdog. 

Geotagging

Have you heard about how your pictures you take on your smartphone can tell someone when and where it was taken? The new smartphones have GPS location capabilities on them today. This is helpful when you use the map application to find directions to a place or service. However, having the GPS capabilities on the smartphones equips the camera application with specialized location hardware known as geotagging.  So when photos are taken on a smartphone, the geotagging gives the time and location of the photos.  This can be great or it can work against your privacy, letting people you don’t know find out where you are. 

Geotagging can be dangerous for people especially teens because if an online predator has been watching your teen they are already observing their behavior and learning about their activities and whereabouts.  And when teens take photos they immediately or soon after post them on their social networking accounts. To protect teens, parents need to turn off the GPS capability on the smartphone so when pictures are taken and posted on social networking sites, online predators won’t have the advantage of seeing where your teen is hanging out at the moment. 

Many parents don’t want to turn off the GPS from their teen’s smartphone because they think it will help find their teen if him/her are taken by a strange. The truth is if an abductor does take a child and if he/she has a cell phone, one of the first things the abductor does is throw the cell phone away knowing it could track the child. So to help protect your child from online predators and meeting them face-to-face, it is wise to set the GPS default to off.  It is smart to periodically check the GPS setting because sometimes if your smartphone’ software is updated or turned off the GPS may turn back on.