When we were kids, my mother gave my sister a diary, so that she could write down her private thoughts. It had a miniature lock and key, so she would know she was the only person with access to it.
I caught my mother reading that diary. More than once. As young as I was, I didn’t know what to do about it. Should I have told my sister? I’d be snitching on my mother. But I did not like the fact that she was violating an explicit privacy policy. It also sent me wondering if and how she might be spying on me.
Was my mother being ethical? She was likely looking for signs her daughter might be struggling in ways she didn’t want to share. Her gift of a “private” diary was definitely deceptive. What about me? Should I have told my sister what I saw? What unspoken compacts would I violate if I kept quiet?
What is the relationship between young people, the online social platforms they use daily, and their parents? Is it okay for parents to snoop on them? It’s not like they need to pick a lock to see what their kids are posting on Instagram or Facebook. Nevertheless young people expect parents to observe boundaries, to refrain from watching their every online move. This ethic, which they believe adults should understand, can easily transfer to the social media companies. Teens are by and large either under-informed or unworried about how their online footprint can haunt them and be used against them.
In 2015, the Thrive Foundation for Youth published an exhaustive report on media use by teens and ‘tweens.’ The report paints a ‘whack-a-mole’ landscape in which parents are only privy to a fraction of the depth and breadth of their kids’ activities. Kids are adept at concealing the full picture of their online presence, while also ironically wishing their parents understood their digital social lives better.
Both groups have plenty to learn. Parents are generally only partially aware of how kids socialize online, and with whom. Furthermore, at a meeting to which adults were not invited, kids have drafted a set if rules they expect mom and dad to understand and follow when it comes to reviewing their online posts.
The trust kids place in their adult guardians to know where the line is drawn is quaint. If they place a similar level of faith in the best intentions of the giant online companies whose terms of service they have signed, they risk a persistent, easily discoverable, indelible digital legacy.
When I taught high-schoolers, I asked them to look into the future, at their 30-year-old selves. I asked if they thought that person was happy with all the choices they were making today. As often as not, they looked at me with an expression that said, “I fail to see the relevance of the question.”