[telecom] Cyberparenting and the Risk of T.M.I.

Cyberparenting and the Risk of T.M.I.

By PAMELA PAUL May 3, 2013

It may be a timeless curse of parenthood to know simultaneously too much about one's teenager and yet never access the information one actually wants. But the unruly morass of today's social media and cellphone-infested landscape seems to have made both aspects of the curse worse.

Nowadays, if you are the parent of a 14-year-old, you can see him guzzle beer, flirt with a girl who squeezes her bosom in every "selfie" she posts on Instagram, and describe a fellow ninth grader in language saltier than any you ever used at that age.

Of course, your parents never even heard you swear. They had no idea where you went after you slammed the front door behind you. They couldn't begin to fathom what you were really up to on a Saturday night.

Today, parents are just one click away: buddied up on Facebook, logging on to Tumblr, peering over cryptic text messages and trying to get a glimpse of Snapchat images before they dissolve into the ether.

Parents who wouldn't be caught dead reading their teenage daughter's diary are stuck in a bind. Who really wants to be privy to all this? Karen Sanders, a 49-year-old mother of two in Scarsdale, N.Y., finds herself reading comments made on her 15-year-old daughter's page. "She'll post something about someone else, and I find myself stalking her friends - not even mine! By then, even I'm creeped out - by myself."

Sandra Tsing Loh, 51, a writer, radio personality and the mother of two tween daughters in the Los Angeles area, said: "All the boundaries have broken down. Facebook is constantly sending alerts of what they're up to: liking and commenting and posting and sharing, like squirrels pecking away. But when their mothers are reading, it's way too much information."

For many adults, the Internet poses a vast array of potential privacy infringements, not all of which are readily defined or understood. But for teenagers the threat is clear: Big Mother.

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