Dot Complicated: Untangling Our Wired Lives (15 page)

Once the personal calls were made, I felt immense pressure to be witty, creative, badass, and sentimental all in the same post. I didn’t have a cute dog who could hold up a little sign saying “I’m going to be a big brother” or the time to paint “Due in May” across my belly, so I went with two photos.

The first was me standing in front of one of the “expectant mother” parking spaces at Facebook HQ, trying to look all tough. The second photo was me, my husband, my brother, and my brother’s now-wife, Priscilla, all celebrating at a local dive bar. Mark had also just been named
Time
magazine’s Person of the Year for 2010, so I captioned the photo, “Celebrating with the man of the year! (and also the girlfriend of the year, husband of the year . . . and fetus of the year! Cheers!!!)”

I wonder what Asher will think about all that. One day those are probably going to be the very first photos on his Facebook Timeline.

As well as planning a strategy for announcing their pregnancies, it’s perfectly normal these days to hear expectant parents say things like “I wanted to name my child XYZ, but the domain wasn’t available, so we chose a different name” or “I need to make sure I can claim a decent Gmail address and Twitter handle for my child before we tell anyone the name we’ve decided on.” Apparently, baby naming has turned into a cutthroat land grab, where expectant mommies and daddies lay claim to valuable digital real estate before deciding on the perfectly unique, perfectly Googleable baby name.

I used to think this was weird, but I’ve changed my mind and now think that it is an acceptable and, actually, responsible thing to do. Our names have always been the major things someone else decides about our personal identities on our behalf. The Internet now provides the opportunity for many more people to “meet” us. So, it’s more important than ever to own our names, both online and offline, as much as possible.

So, don’t be afraid to share as a parent. But think first about what you want to share and how. The choices you make will echo through the Internet for many years to come and long after that baby is out of the cradle.

Becoming an Internet Jedi

All of the above is invaluable, but we still need to address the elephant in the room. How exactly should we be teaching our kids to use technology, and how do we keep them safe online? How do we achieve a balance between giving them the freedom to explore the Internet and feeling the urge to shield them from all potential dangers?

For the answer, let’s go back to a time before the “Internets” as we know it.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away . . . (by which I mean the 1990s in Dobbs Ferry), when I was fifteen, I directed my siblings in an ambitious amateur film project. I was in charge of making an amazing space opera with a cast of loveable, heroic characters, each with its own distinctive personality and unique costume. My siblings had all spent at least twenty minutes learning their lines and were deeply committed to the project, assuming that there was enough time between dinner and homework to complete it. And none of the cast or crew was worried about a lawsuit from George Lucas, despite the name of our interstellar production: the Star Wars silogy. It was a silogy because it was our silly remake of the Star Wars trilogy.

It was 1997 and the Star Wars trilogy had just been rereleased with updated special effects. For many kids, this was the first time watching
Star Wars.
For the older folks, this was a chance to relive happy childhood memories. So, basically everyone in the world was going crazy for Han, Luke, Leia, Chewie, R2-D2, and C-3PO all over again. It was no different at the Zuckerberg house, and once we had seen the new movies, we became even more insufferable. Now all we wanted to do was talk about light sabers, wookies, and Yoda.

Then we took our new geekdom to a whole new level. After my dad allowed us to use his old video camera, we decided to film the silogy. And I was in charge. My first director credit.

The casting was easy. Mark played Luke. Donna was Princess Leia, and once we figured out that her long hair could also double as a beard, she was also Obi-Wan. I was a little too old to be in costume, but I still insisted on getting to play Darth Vader and Han Solo. It might seem unfair for the director to award herself the two best roles in the movie, but to be honest, everyone was just glad to avoid Arielle’s part. She played R2-D2.

To make it work, we stuffed her into a mini garbage can. She wasn’t happy. But we all have to make sacrifices for art.

What was the best and the worst part of our masterpiece? To make the classic opening text of a
Star Wars
movie, we printed the intro message from the real movie on the ancient dot-matrix printer in my dad’s office and then slowly walked the roll of paper past the camera. We didn’t even try to hide the fact it was printed on printer paper; you could see the little squares at the edge of the screen.

Here’s the thing: No matter how tragic the acting or how terrible the costumes and effects, that was one of the most awesome and memorable projects we got to do as kids. We wrote the script, brainstormed the scenes, and improvised all the technical stuff ourselves from start to finish. It was a huge learning experience for all of us.

In many ways, I think the Star Wars silogy was an ideal model for how to let kids learn to use technology and do something fun and creative with it. That project was a chance to experiment and create content of our own, instead of just consuming it. It was a chance to learn and explore, and also to take some risks, within a controlled environment.

Dr. Teresa Belton, a senior researcher at the University of East Anglia’s School of Education and Lifelong Learning, conducted a series of interviews with authors, artists, and scientists, in an attempt to explore what effect boredom and downtime had on their lives. Dr. Belton discovered that when kids were given the freedom to waste time on their own, they filled those moments with creative projects, developing what she refers to as an “internal stimulus” that leads to a rich life of creative expression.

Turning an iPad on for your kids doesn’t mean your kids have to turn their minds off. There are apps for painting, drawing, writing, composing music, reading, and scientific exploration on that platform, and they can fire up the imagination of any bored kid. Just because the piano comes in app form doesn’t make it that much less of a piano.

Our parents trusted us to do the silogy project in our own way. They knew what we were doing all along and laughed about the results afterward. We didn’t share the film publicly afterward (sorry), and we didn’t break the camera. Also, R2 didn’t suffer any lasting trauma from being stuffed in a garbage can. I think. Sorry, Arielle.

I realize now, Dad was smart to give us the freedom to experiment with technology.

When you learn to ride a bike, at first you have constant supervision from your parents, and you have extra safeguards like training wheels. But eventually you learn to ride, and the training wheels come off. When that happens your confidence and ability increase, and your parents have greater trust in you to ride safely. You no longer need to be supervised at every moment, and you get to ride to the end of the street without permission. As you get older and more competent, you can ride downtown to buy candy at the store or go to a friend’s house. Eventually your parents trust your judgment enough that they don’t have to worry about where you’re going at all. Okay, okay—parents will always find
something
to worry about. But at least they can breathe a bit easier knowing where you’re going and what you’re doing in your spare time.

That’s how we need to think about technology with our children. We need to help our kids develop good habits, but we also need to give them the freedom to take controlled risks and learn to be independent. We should always be at least aware of what they’re doing online, but we shouldn’t have to stand over their shoulders and constantly watch them.

Striking a balance requires work, and we need to approach safety as a conversation. That conversation begins by teaching our kids about the wonders, as well as the dark sides, of the Internet. The web provides amazing knowledge, entertainment, tools, and services, and passing on an interest and proficiency in how to use these things is one of the most valuable gifts you can give your child. But our children should be able to recognize that the Internet can be a dangerous place, too.

Online, people can be mean and hide behind anonymity to bully others. There are unsavory sites and people online, and there is a lot of unreliable information. Just as our kids learn to read, they need to learn digital literacy: how to sort through the good and the bad online. And they need to learn about what is right and wrong to post and share online, about themselves and others.

They’re only going to learn if we know enough about technology to teach them. After one post on my Dot Complicated newsletter, about how to talk to your kids about posting revealing pictures online, one mother wrote me a personal e-mail with a troubling story. Recently, her seven-year-old daughter had come home from school saying, “Mom, can I show you what a girl in my class did today?” At which point she showed her mom that the girl in her class had uploaded naked photos of herself to Instagram. Not only that, she had uploaded naked photos of her mother getting out of the shower. Did I mention this girl was seven years old?!

This particular mother knew what Instagram was. She was able to sit down with her daughter and talk to her about the photos, asking her, “Do you think what your friend did was right?” and having a meaningful conversation. After which, she promptly called the other girl’s mother to tell her what was going on. The other mom had no idea what Instagram was or how a naked photo could even get onto a cell phone in the first place.

How can we expect our children to engage safely with technology if we don’t even know enough ourselves to talk to them about it? I know we’re all busy. We all have exhausting professional lives and home lives. We have homes to maintain, friendships to maintain, and some of the lucky ones still have bodies left to maintain. Alas, there’s now one other area to maintain: our knowledge of the latest technology, gadgets, apps, and sites our children are using.

There are some very important rules to set and conversations to have with your children about online behavior.

1. Your body is your business only. Think before you post revealing pictures.

2. Don’t bully or go along with other people who are bullying.

3. Only add “friends” online if you also know them in real life.

4. Always treat others with respect, the way you would want to be treated.

5. If you’re going to put something in writing, make sure you would be comfortable if it was reprinted in a newspaper.

6. Only say something to someone online if you would also say it to that person’s face in real life.

7. Be careful with personal information about yourself or your family. Only share things with people you trust.

8. Be vigilant against predators, lurkers, and bullies.

9. Above all, guard yourself and your dignity, and stay safe.

Of course, just as the training wheels come off the bike when our kids are ready, we need to give kids the freedom and confidence to explore the Internet for themselves. We can’t just program them to do the right thing; they have to learn what the right things are as they grow as individuals. The conversation needs to be two-way. We need to have an ongoing conversation with our kids about safety by staying as engaged and involved in their lives online as we would offline. But our kids also need to know we trust them to explore the web themselves, to make mistakes and learn from them—and that if anything ever goes wrong, we’ll always be there for them.

So, when your kids are just starting to build an online identity, begin by letting them go online only on a main “family” computer, kept in the living room or another shared family space. This will help you keep an eye on everything at the beginning. This is also why I don’t want Asher running off with my iPad. I’m happy for him to play on it, but if he gets into trouble, I want to be there to help him. (Also, as a toddler, he’ll probably smash it.)

As kids get older, let them build up to the privilege of going online unsupervised, whether on a laptop in their rooms, on their mobile phones, or anything Wi-Fi enabled, such as an e-reader or an iPod. Collect computers and gadgets or turn off the Wi-Fi in select areas of the house after a certain time at night. Install monitoring software for your kids’ laptops, tablets, and phones. Because tech evolves so quickly, any apps I mention here will likely be outdated by the time this book is published, so I’d encourage you to find websites that explore these topics. Or you can always join our newsletter community if you’re interested in staying up to date with the latest innovations.

Most important, though, build up trust with your children and educate them. By the time they’re accessing the open Internet, make sure they’re ready for it. There’s no app out there that can teach the type of good judgment parents can teach.

It’s worth noting that many social media sites require that children be thirteen years old to have an account, due to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). That doesn’t mean that some kids don’t find ways around it or lie about their age to create an account before their thirteenth birthday. It does mean that the U.S. government and these sites recommend thirteen as the age when it’s appropriate to have social media accounts. Certainly that’s something to take into consideration.

Another way to keep your kids safe is to limit the time they spend on websites that permit anonymous interaction. We need our kids to learn early the benefits of authentic identity online.

While bullying is part of human nature and has always existed, the issue is exacerbated on the Internet because people hide behind anonymity. It’s easy to be mean when you’re using the name “bumblebee57” instead of your real name and nobody knows who you really are or can hold you accountable. It’s also easy to be mean simply because it’s so easy to type something and hit “enter.” You don’t need to invest a lot of thought in the effect your words have on others, especially when they’re strangers. People forget that when they post something mean, there is a human being on the other end reading the post. It’s so easy in this anonymous, digitally passive-aggressive world to forget that.