There have been countless articles, guides, monographs and lists offering advice to people who use Twitter to make money, selling everything from real estate to yet another ponzi scam to 100% Herbal Penis Enlargement Software.
This guide is for the rest of us. Those of us who use Twitter to inform and be informed, to entertain and be entertained, to see what people around the world are thinking and doing and reading and listening to - or just plain talk to people.
We don't care about monetizing Twitter, we are not interested in phishing or downlines or affliliates or online marketing or landing pages.
We are just having fun. Amusing ourselves, maybe we might amuse someone else. Maybe we'll learn something. But the things we want to learn about have nothing to do with effective business model strategy implementation potential of social media.
Twitter Dos and Don'ts
Pay no attention to guidelines or Tweet Tips that advise you to tweet only once every fifteen or twenty minutes. These are usually written by well-meaning individuals who have simply not yet grasped the entirely voluntary nature of the following process.
You may rest assured that if any fellow Tweeter is of the opinion that you Tweet too much, they will not follow you, nor continue to do so a minute longer than they wish to.
Similarly, should they find that your Tweets displease them, for any reason at all, the TweetLord has, in his wisdom, provided an easy-to-click button that will render your utterances completely invisible, empowering him to enjoy his Twitter experience without the anxiety that he might be obliged to view your horrid thoughts.
There is one thing, though...
That awesome background composed of tiled wallet-sized photos of your offspring, pupdog, or self that renders your actual Tweets for all practical purposes invisible to any and all who have enough interest to click your profile page, is a terrific way to discourage would-be followers.
Followers and Followees
Commercial and business Twitter users need lots of followers, to increase the likelihood that somehow the time they spend on Twitter will result in someone sending them money. They may follow very few people, or none at all.
For the rest of us, however, whether we use Twitter for fun, information, or both, it's the opposite.
If you're not on Twitter for the purpose of getting money, then it's not about who follows you, but whom you follow!
It is the people you follow - and what they say - that will affect your "Twitter experience, because it is the Tweets of your followees that will populate your "Home" page!
Having a real person follow you is a compliment. It means that something you said struck that person as intriguing, interesting or useful - or maybe they thought it was just awful, and are following you out of horrid fascination.
Whatever. You made an impression, and that person decided that they want the things you say to appear in their Twitter Home page.
Some younger users may have some special feelings or perceptions about the number of followers they have, versus the number of followers their friends have. This is just a normal aspect of the growing up process, and real talk, no matter how old we are, we all like to think that we are good enough, smart enough, and doggone it, people like us!
However, we are less likely to view the number of Twitter followers we have as any sort of benchmark or indicator of our coolness, nor is it likely to impact our self-esteem.
What it can do is give us an idea of whether what we are saying on Twitter is interesting to a lot of people - that is, if we give a speidihead whether we are saying interesting things on Twitter or not.
That's going to be a very individual question, and will depend entirely on each person's personality and reason for Twittering in the first place.
If your only reason for dedicating a browser tab or two to Twitter is because you want to keep up-to-date with news and/or celebrity gossip headlines, and rarely, if ever, emit a Tweet yourself, then whether those infrequent utterances are perceived by those who read them as interesting is likely to be a matter of supreme indifference to you.
If, however, your intention is to inform people about a worthy cause or a cool new open source video converter, if you perceive yourself to be an armchair pundit or wag, or just someone with interesting things to say, or if you simply like the "giant chat room" aspect of Twitter, and are there to talk to people, then the number of followers you have can be a useful indicator light - if they're growing by the week, whatever you are saying is interesting to those people, at least, and conversely, if they're dropping like flies, maybe typing Finnegans Wake in 140 character installments wasn't the brilliant idea you thought it was.
What's Your Twitternality?
Unlike many social networking sites, Twitter allows you to have multiple accounts.
So even if you're a Digital Native with zero security concerns who Twitters using their real offline "government name," you don't have to go open a new gmail account just to make yourself a Twitter alter-ego named Bubbles who likes to Tweet about her hobby of decorating herself with ver temporary mehendi tattoos made with fine fruit compotes and other high-end condiments.
Not that you necessarily should divide yourself into two or more beings, if you happen to have widely divergent interests.
I don't. I'm liable to Tweet about current events one minute and Lauren Conrad's eyeliner choices the next, and something entirely unrelated to either a minute later. (My followers tend to be the intrepid, extremely tolerant type with wide ranging interests of their own).
It's just nice to know that you have the option.
You can have one Twitternality, or several. It's up to you. As is how much any or all of them reflect who you actually are.
If you need to be told that it is impolite to insult people, or that you catch more flies with honey than vinegar, or any of that other basic social skill stuff that should have happened to you sometime around age six and stuck, then nothing I have to say will help you, and it is very probable that you don't care, and so aren't even reading this.
It is common courtesy to be considerate of your followers as in not sending them off to links that don't work, or recommending software or recipes you haven't tried (unless you make that clear), but if you are Twittering for your own amusement, unless "being different characters" IS your amusement, you will have a much easier time of it if you will just be yourself, whether that self is, like me, a Brevity Impaired person who Tweets Too Much AND takes Pills, or an unabashedly airheaded box o' rocks, a slightly obnoxious roue wannabe, even a pompous ass.
So you're an acquired taste. You may not have thousands of followers, but at least you'll know that the ones you do have have acquired the needed taste to enjoy reading what you have to say, vapid or inane, profound or profane!
We Have The Power
From time to time, someone will innocently wonder why the TwitLord does not simply divide the population in two: Business or Personal, Commercial and Non.
While we cannot know the mind of the TwitLord, the most obvious answer is that without the Non, Twitter is of little use to Commerce, save for the B to B element, which, while significant, is of somewhat limited utility to the ever-burgeoning hordes of online marketers, MLM/ponzi scheme mongers, purveyors of affiliates, click-throughs and assorted flotsam and jetsam of the Fauxconomy.
You and I may know, for example, that it will be a cold day in hell before we go off clicking our way through eighty pages of crap in the belief that doing so will result in our receiving a benefit of some kind, or purchasing a list of junk e-mail addresses from which we hope to fabricate a downline that will result in people sending us money.
But the hapless fool who just paid some "entrepreneur" $59.99 for an e-book entitled "How to Make Real Money Working From Home," consisting of a brief explanation of how ponzi schemes work, and a price list for various sized lists of email addresses does not know that.
Nor, for that matter, does Wal-Mart, or The Coca-Cola company, nor will they know that when they assign an intern to the task of Tweeting urls to their latest promotion or printable coupon.
In short, they need us more than we need them.
So if your reason for Tweeting has nothing whatsoever to do with anything remotely connected to making money, feel free to follow only others who share that quality, and even, if you wish, to block any commercial Tweeters from following you, although, if you are into the status of follower numbers, or having a good "grade" on those amusement sites that rate your Twitterfabulousness according to your proportion of followers, followees, and mutually following entities, it may interest you to know that because of that They Need US More thing, the business Tweeters will follow you whether you follow them back or not, so they may be, in that sense, useful to some non-business Tweeters.
There are exceptions, of course, but most of them do not Tweet very much, all you will see from them will be an occasional automated exhortation to buy their mud and/or visit their website.
Even if you could care less how many followers and followees you have, there is a legitmate reason why you might want to let some of the commercial Tweeters follow you.
Rightly or wrongly, justly or unjustly, people who are following a great many more people than they are being followed by may be viewed by some Tweeters, even intelligent ones who say interesting things, as more likely to be a bot - or a commercial Tweeter.
Thus, as your numbers of both followers and followees creeps from the dozens to the hundreds, you may wish to address the issue of parity, by paring, as need be.
It can be a tricky operation - Some Business Tweeters say interesting things, and participate in conversations as well as conduct business, so unfollowing ALL commercial Tweeters could hurl baby out with the bathwater!
OK, I signed up, and I read this whole thing but I still don't get it. What IS Twitter exactly?
Think of it as a giant chat room. The whole world is here, all these people are telling you what they're doing. You can do the same, tell what you're doing, and you can comment on what other people say.
There are no separate rooms you can duck into, you can't make your own room, but you can pick out people who look interesting and follow them, that means that you can see everything they say. If they think you look interesting, they can follow you back.
That's pretty much it. Go forth and Tweet.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Thursday, December 4, 2008
The Great Divide: Welcome to the Ghetto
Anonymity (sometimes expressed as its more euphemistic and "nuanced" cousin, Privacy) is a major pulse point of the Great Divide between digital native and immigrant, the very essence of the Web 2.0 concept itself.
For many of us who were already well into adulthood when the personal computer itself was the ultimate in ultra-new gadgetry, our pre-Windows Era hearts openly aflame with glee and a soft secret center of awe as we leapt delightedly into the marvelous BBS culture, and when the day came that we first typed those magic strings, and through the miracle of raw telnet, the world was suddenly - and literally - at our fingertips!
Anyone who tells you that they did not feel a visceral and primordial thrill of history, a profound sense of promise at once exultant and solemn, the first time a line of text appeared on their monitor, a line of text being typed by someone on the other side of the planet, talking to them is either lying or missing a helix somewhere.
For the first time in the history of our species, anyone - who had access to a computer and a modem - could talk to anyone else - anywhere, in real time, with whom they shared any common language, and programming languages count.
To my mind, this was the single greatest achievement of mankind, and I sincerely believed, and still do, that it has the potential to make right many, many wrongs.
From this could come peace.
To be among the first generation to do this, be a part of it, was and is an honor so immense, so humbling, that if there are words to describe it, I do not know them.
We had the ability now to communicate with our brothers and sisters -mind to mind, essence to essence, pure thought to pure thought - without the barriers of age, of gender, of geography.
Anonymity was an integral part of that. We could create and develop, to the extent we wished, all the personas that we cared to, limited only by our imagination and desire - and all quite apart and separate from our offline selves, our "real life."
This fundamental philosophy of "cyberspace" could, I suppose, be compared to a core belief/value system in what we lovingly called "MeatSpace."
As that raw telnet evolved into AOL and Compuserve, and all those little basement "service providers," selling various flavors of accounts that gave us monumental privileges - like bearing witness to the birth of yahoo, many of us went forth gleefully and reverently into the various parallel universes that came into being, our online personas, new and old coming into being with them, but all solidly and unshakably rooted in the awe of that anonymity, and something that many of us might keep even more secret than that awe - the hope that this pure communication between so many millions of people will produce an end result of peace, or at the very (and more realistic if less lofty) least, put a dent in the hatred by dint of born of Greed-driven marketing, thus leaving us to contend only with regular old hatred born of regular old anti-Otherness.
For the digital native, the existence of the internet as miraculous evolutionary milestone is a concept that, if present at all, is purely intellectual, comparable to the way we of the Old School, the digital immigrant, are likely to feel about something like radio. Or the telegraph.
The native sees it as a way to connect the entirety of one's offline self - not just one's thoughts - to the rest of the world.
In the ultra-pragmatic view of the native, the internet is the most basic and natural marketing tool, it's about resumes and examples of work, establishing a presence, getting oneself out there, the driving philosophy being that exposure to so many millions of people will produce an end result of receiving money.
Anonymity, as any native will tell you, would defeat that purpose.
And so here we are, native and immigrant, each with our respective perspectives, our very different cyber-worldviews, we smile at one another across The Great Divide.
Neither of us escapes trade-offs. For many of us immigrants, our core cyber-value/worldview may give us immeasurable intangible benefits, but we forfeit money.
Although being human, of course I cherish the hope, but realize that it is extremely unlikely that anyone is going to paypal any money to my email address. (Though if anyone might wish to, it is right there in my profile, a click away... )
The native is, by virtue of simply having been born in a different time and thus possessed of that pragmatic native cyber-view, very likely to be forever denied at least some of those intangible benefits, a circumstance that they are just as unlikely to even think of as a trade-off.
But their "real" tradeoff, the collateral and lateral costs of the forfeit of anonymity, will for many, involve sacrifices that they will, even if they do not today, consider "worse" than giving up money.
Another of my fellow anonymous voices touches on it, and with more brevity than I possibly could:
"Facebook and Myspace have been the downfall of many people. I know quite a few people who have lost their jobs over something found on Myspace or Facebook pertaining to them. Drunken or sexually explicit photos...things like that."
"Things like that" can include everything from opinions to an impolite retort or an unburdening of a troubled heart, the divulging of events, information, of an extremely personal nature, all typed without an overwhelming ever-mindfulness that it will be available for viewing by any and everybody forever, and without a fundamental and uncrackable anonymity.
Yet another Voice from the Wilderness elaborates:
"...same thing with blogs. and it doesn't even have to be anything explicit really.. i once had a grad school classmate who would put really personal stuff on her blog..amongst other things, fights with her thesis advisor. she would use his real name (!) and would go on at length how he was so rude to her, how he was making her life a living hell, etc. this was all hosted on her web account through the unversity network (which is same extension as email address) so it wasn't like she was anonymous. i talked to her labmates and they were all aware of what she wrote about on her blog (she gossiped about them as well). i'm sure her prof read it too and i imagine it only worsened the issues between them..."
And then makes a very interesting observation:
"... i guess to many people the internet feels anonymous even though it really isn't..."
It feels so to them sometimes, and in some cyber-places, even though they themselves have, by their own hand, driven by that native cyber-view, shut themselves out of the fortress of anonymity forever.
It can be done with just a few keystrokes, one time, and the gate slams shut, never to open again.
Web 1.0 may have been all about awe and reverence and hope and history, and Web 2.0 may be all about connectivity, about marketing, but one of the few statements in which the future tense does not necessitate the prudence of a "maybe" is this:
Web 3.0 is so going to be all about remorse - and vain attempts at damage control...
(I suppose the term "connectivity" could be said to be to marketing as "privacy" is to "anonymity," but that would, and probably will be, another rant).
For many of us who were already well into adulthood when the personal computer itself was the ultimate in ultra-new gadgetry, our pre-Windows Era hearts openly aflame with glee and a soft secret center of awe as we leapt delightedly into the marvelous BBS culture, and when the day came that we first typed those magic strings, and through the miracle of raw telnet, the world was suddenly - and literally - at our fingertips!
Anyone who tells you that they did not feel a visceral and primordial thrill of history, a profound sense of promise at once exultant and solemn, the first time a line of text appeared on their monitor, a line of text being typed by someone on the other side of the planet, talking to them is either lying or missing a helix somewhere.
For the first time in the history of our species, anyone - who had access to a computer and a modem - could talk to anyone else - anywhere, in real time, with whom they shared any common language, and programming languages count.
To my mind, this was the single greatest achievement of mankind, and I sincerely believed, and still do, that it has the potential to make right many, many wrongs.
From this could come peace.
To be among the first generation to do this, be a part of it, was and is an honor so immense, so humbling, that if there are words to describe it, I do not know them.
We had the ability now to communicate with our brothers and sisters -mind to mind, essence to essence, pure thought to pure thought - without the barriers of age, of gender, of geography.
Anonymity was an integral part of that. We could create and develop, to the extent we wished, all the personas that we cared to, limited only by our imagination and desire - and all quite apart and separate from our offline selves, our "real life."
This fundamental philosophy of "cyberspace" could, I suppose, be compared to a core belief/value system in what we lovingly called "MeatSpace."
As that raw telnet evolved into AOL and Compuserve, and all those little basement "service providers," selling various flavors of accounts that gave us monumental privileges - like bearing witness to the birth of yahoo, many of us went forth gleefully and reverently into the various parallel universes that came into being, our online personas, new and old coming into being with them, but all solidly and unshakably rooted in the awe of that anonymity, and something that many of us might keep even more secret than that awe - the hope that this pure communication between so many millions of people will produce an end result of peace, or at the very (and more realistic if less lofty) least, put a dent in the hatred by dint of born of Greed-driven marketing, thus leaving us to contend only with regular old hatred born of regular old anti-Otherness.
For the digital native, the existence of the internet as miraculous evolutionary milestone is a concept that, if present at all, is purely intellectual, comparable to the way we of the Old School, the digital immigrant, are likely to feel about something like radio. Or the telegraph.
The native sees it as a way to connect the entirety of one's offline self - not just one's thoughts - to the rest of the world.
In the ultra-pragmatic view of the native, the internet is the most basic and natural marketing tool, it's about resumes and examples of work, establishing a presence, getting oneself out there, the driving philosophy being that exposure to so many millions of people will produce an end result of receiving money.
Anonymity, as any native will tell you, would defeat that purpose.
And so here we are, native and immigrant, each with our respective perspectives, our very different cyber-worldviews, we smile at one another across The Great Divide.
Neither of us escapes trade-offs. For many of us immigrants, our core cyber-value/worldview may give us immeasurable intangible benefits, but we forfeit money.
Although being human, of course I cherish the hope, but realize that it is extremely unlikely that anyone is going to paypal any money to my email address. (Though if anyone might wish to, it is right there in my profile, a click away... )
The native is, by virtue of simply having been born in a different time and thus possessed of that pragmatic native cyber-view, very likely to be forever denied at least some of those intangible benefits, a circumstance that they are just as unlikely to even think of as a trade-off.
But their "real" tradeoff, the collateral and lateral costs of the forfeit of anonymity, will for many, involve sacrifices that they will, even if they do not today, consider "worse" than giving up money.
Another of my fellow anonymous voices touches on it, and with more brevity than I possibly could:
"Facebook and Myspace have been the downfall of many people. I know quite a few people who have lost their jobs over something found on Myspace or Facebook pertaining to them. Drunken or sexually explicit photos...things like that."
"Things like that" can include everything from opinions to an impolite retort or an unburdening of a troubled heart, the divulging of events, information, of an extremely personal nature, all typed without an overwhelming ever-mindfulness that it will be available for viewing by any and everybody forever, and without a fundamental and uncrackable anonymity.
Yet another Voice from the Wilderness elaborates:
"...same thing with blogs. and it doesn't even have to be anything explicit really.. i once had a grad school classmate who would put really personal stuff on her blog..amongst other things, fights with her thesis advisor. she would use his real name (!) and would go on at length how he was so rude to her, how he was making her life a living hell, etc. this was all hosted on her web account through the unversity network (which is same extension as email address) so it wasn't like she was anonymous. i talked to her labmates and they were all aware of what she wrote about on her blog (she gossiped about them as well). i'm sure her prof read it too and i imagine it only worsened the issues between them..."
And then makes a very interesting observation:
"... i guess to many people the internet feels anonymous even though it really isn't..."
It feels so to them sometimes, and in some cyber-places, even though they themselves have, by their own hand, driven by that native cyber-view, shut themselves out of the fortress of anonymity forever.
It can be done with just a few keystrokes, one time, and the gate slams shut, never to open again.
Web 1.0 may have been all about awe and reverence and hope and history, and Web 2.0 may be all about connectivity, about marketing, but one of the few statements in which the future tense does not necessitate the prudence of a "maybe" is this:
Web 3.0 is so going to be all about remorse - and vain attempts at damage control...
(I suppose the term "connectivity" could be said to be to marketing as "privacy" is to "anonymity," but that would, and probably will be, another rant).
Your Kids & Online Safety: The Shocking Truth (Warning: DISTURBING CONTENT)
Two children are at their computers, chatting.
Little Ruggles is chatting with his classmates, in an online chatroom set up by a school official, a teacher, principal, etc. Only kids in his class, to whom he is known and all are known to him - and the teacher, who is always present during chat time, use the chat room. Ruggles and his parents feel confident that the presence of the teacher, and the fact that he is chatting with his classmates, many of whom are neighbors and friends, all work together to make their child's online time a safe experience. In fact, Ruggles has been taught, and is only allowed to chat online with friends and neighbors his parents know. He likes being able to talk to his friends online, and make plans for real-life play dates.
Little Ratson is chatting with a complete stranger, about absolutely terrible things. He is using a nick related to a popular cartoon. Nothing in his "profile" gives any clue as to his real name or location, nor does anything in any data accessible to the stranger.** Nothing on his hard disk contains anything that might link any of his online personas to the real little boy. Ratson cannot remember a time without the internet, one of the first things he learned, right up there with not talking to strangers in public places, and remembering to use the bathroom when he needed to poop, was to never, ever reveal any real life info to people on the internet, that offline and online are always to be kept just as separate as his dirty big boy pants from the clean ones. He enjoys making up different identities. Sometimes, like today, he might be that favorite cartoon character. Other times he is a fantastic creature from outer space. But he would never, ever be Ratson or Sonrat, or Rat Sonic, or be from anywhere near Townville, only other planets.
Which child is safer?
Almost all parents are going to read the first sentence about what Ratson is doing and say Ruggles.
And they would be wrong. Potentially dangerously, tragically wrong.
Ratson is the one who is playing it safe, and Ruggles is the one who is engaging in dangerous online activity.
Q) But wait - didn't you say all the kids in his class are there, and the teacher?
A) I did, and they are all in more danger from their online chatting than Ratson.
It is precisely because their real life identities are known that they are in danger. Who is standing behind that little neighbor child, as he chats to yours? Who may have obtained unauthorized access to another classmate - even the teacher's computer, and thus gained access to email addresses and online nicks that are connected to real life children in a known location?
The Internets are here to stay. They are, and will continue to be, a part of your child's life.
The priority we give, and the zeal with which we teach our children about internet safety and security should not only equal, but surpass, the urgency and intensity we bring to bear when we instill values and practices with regard to toilet training.
Q) Well, OK, but couldn't that bad person who was standing behind the chair and watching the chat be present when he goes over to play with the little neighbor children at their houses?
A) Yes. There is always that chance that a bad person may be visiting even our nicest neighbors, who have no idea that he is a bad person.
No matter how much we might want to, it is not possible to protect our children 100% from every possibility that a bad person might see them, be in the same place they are. You could, and here are people who do, take drastic measures, such as never allowing the child to visit any neighbors or friends, go on school trips, or even school itself!
However, most parents want their kids to enjoy, within the bounds of common sense safety precautions, "normal" childhood experiences, like learning to play and share with other kids, participate in group activities etc.
That's what this is about - a very important common sense safety precaution.
Q) Sorry to interrupt, but what is so bad about the school chat room? All the other kids are doing it, and we are all in agreement that we can't protect them from every single possibility of every unsafe thing!
A) There are two reasons. The first has to do with a basic principle of security and safety practices that we all employ:
Layering. We don't just keep our bank card in a zipped compartment of our wallet, we keep that wallet in a zipped purse, and we keep that purse attached to our person, or at the very least, in our sight or under lock and key, no matter where we go. There's three layers right there.
And should someone manage to get that card anyway, our bank has even more layers to protect us.
Layering means that not only do we lock our door when we go on vacation, we make arrangements for someone to come by and turn lights on and off, collect mail, water plants, turn on the TV, make it look like someone is home!
The second reason that school chat room is more dangerous than an anonymous chat with the most awful stranger you, as a parent, can possibly imagine, is that information in real life, while it has the potential to travel, is much more likely to stay put, or to travel to a dead end, whereas information on the internet is potentially available to millions of people - forever.
That cannot be said of your debit card, even if you drop it in front of the ATM (unless, of course, someone puts the data on the internet)
You may trust the teacher, you may trust the neighbor family, but can you say the same of the entity that obtains unauthorized access to their computer?
So not only does participation in that non-anonymous school chat room take away A layer of protection, the layer it takes away is a pretty damn important one!
The vilest person in the world, as long as he does not know your child's name, your name, or where your child is, even if he would like to, cannot harm your child.
Thus it is Little Ratson who is safe, and Little Ruggles who is playing the danger game.
Q) But what about the emotional danger to Little Ratson, in there talking about terrible things with a bad person?
A) That is a valid concern, and one that deserves, and will get, its own topic. There are tools you can give your child that will help with that, even prevent it, but be warned that these tools are for your child, not you, and you will not like them one bit.
But for now, both you and everybody else who can just see somebody standing behind that chair need to know that while no, we cannot eliminate every single possibility that a bad person will obtain access to your child, there is a lot that we CAN do, things that ARE within our realistic and sustainable control.
And for that reason I am starting with the most basic and immediate kind of danger, with the goal of maintaining Little Ratson physically alive and whole, and thus available as a subject for concern about the emotional danger of talking to the bad person.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
Start early. When they learn to talk, when their hands are first able to grab a mouse, when they develop that first sense of "needing a clean diaper," when you give those first basic lessons about Stranger Danger, make internet safety part of that, just as much, even more important than remembering to tell somebody about that diaper, more important than not pooping on the Authentic antique Isfahan in the living room.
WHAT TO TEACH
The internet is a wonderful place to play and learn. It is especially wonderful because on the internet, you can be anybody or anything, you can imagine! You can be a tiger, a dragon, a space man, a never-before heard of creature that you invented. You can be anybody but you.
Because on the internet, you, the real life you, is a secret. So are mami and papi and little sister. And because where you live is also a most important family-only offline secret thing to talk about that means you can be from any planet you want! You can be from a star, or a galaxy, or a constellation, real ones, or ones you made up! Or you could be from inside a shoe that goes around the world like a moon or a satellite!
You can be as many people or creatures as you want to be. You can even be a teenager, because it is the magical internet!
Of course, the identities you invent are make-believe, pretend ones, so online things have to stay always 100% even-more-important-than-not-pooping-on-the-Authentic-antique-Isfahan separate from real life, offline things.
That is what makes it all magic and fun! That's what makes it big kid, grown-up stuff, getting to have exactly the same rules as mami and papi!
NICKS
Nicks should have no relation to any part of the child's name, your name, a sibling's name, or any real place name.
PASSWORDS
Same as nicks. Even if someone "hacks" your child's password, they will not be hacking into anything that could be extrapolated into real life contact info.
And that is pretty much your basic arsenal. Absolute separation of online and offline. Anything that compromises that, the answer is no. Anything that does not compromise that, go for it!
Yes. There in the back. I can see you've been dying to say something.
Q) If all the kids in his class are doing the chat room, and I don't let him do it, isn't that the same thing as those people who homeschool their child and never let him visit the family across the street or go anywhere or do anything?
A) No. You let him visit the family across the street all the time. And he goes to school with the other kids, plays on a community sports team, takes dance and karate lessons, and participates in children's activities sponsored by one or more local faith-based entities. The only thing all the other kids are doing that he can't do are those non-anonymous chat rooms.
Q) Won't that be causing an issue, calling undue attention to him, making him weird?
A) To the first two, possibly, but only momentarily. As much as the other kids like him, they are still kids, and with no offense meant with respect to how charming and popular your child is, they will soon be much too busy chatting with each other to mourn his absence nearly as much as they ought to, and the only reason we forgive them for that is because they have the consolation of coming over to play with him once chat time is over.
And no, it will not make him weird. You will have to find other ways to do that, and no doubt you will do a fine job.
Q) Come on, isn't this a little extreme? I mean all the kids have each other's emails, and they are texting, so they have his phone number, and their cell phones can connect to the internet, they can even take photos of him with their phones and put those on the internet.
A) Ah, yes! Thanks for reminding me. No photos on the internet, ever. Not of him, not of you, not of siblings, not of your house, or your garden, or the patio, pool, or the new grill. No, not the old grill, either. Nor the beautiful skyline of your town or city, nor any of its attractions, even if it is Tokyo and who could ever possibly find you there? Would you really want to find out?
And double Thanks for making a very valid point. It is indeed possible for a classmate - or a stranger in the street - to use their phone to take photos of your child and put them on the internet. They can even run them through Photoshop, and put your child's head on the body of another child, a child who is doing things even more awful than what Little Ratson was talking about with that terrible person.
And there are some very very sick people, as well as some just plain bad people who deliberately seek out even the most innocent photos and writings of identified, non-anonymous children, for their own use, as well as for sale. Just like we have our forums and groups for sharing information, so do they.
But let's get back to your question. You said something about extreme? You wanted to remove a layer of protection that you CAN control?
Yes, I probably misunderstood you. You are right, the acoustics in here do suck.
Q) The only chat room my child is allowed to go to is run by the Temple/Mosque/Church/Drum Circle. I can understand having doubts about the school, but -
A) The danger is not related to the worthiness or trustworthiness of the institution. The danger has to do with your child's real life contact info being on machines you can't control.
Q) This is rEdiculous! His name and our names are already in the school computer.
A) Well, for the sake of argument, let's say that all those records are not only kept on a machine with a modem, but on the very same machine the teacher uses for after-school online chats.
Once you have gotten over the sudden realization that your school is an internet security hot mess, scroll up a couple of paragraphs - no, never mind, I'll paste it. "You wanted to remove a layer of protection that you CAN control?"
Q) OK, OK, I give up. Just stop giving me nightmares. As if I don't have enough of them already.
So what exactly do I SAY to his teachers? To the other parents? What reason do I give for why HE, out of all the other kids, why HE has to be the ONLY one that is not allowed to participate in a school-established, school-run, and school-supervised chat room?
A) If you have a printer, you could put a copy of this in with the note.
Now that you have resolved to do what you CAN to save your own child from being harmed, it can't hurt to at least try to pay it forward. Who knows? You just might save someone else's child.
** To maximize security, privacy and anonymity on your child's computer, you will need to enlist the aid of a nerd. I can say this without qualification, because if YOU had the skillz to do it, you would have done it already - just as you would have done it to your own - the day you first brought it home.
Q) Hold up! I just wanted to ask one more quick question. Do you even HAVE kids?
A) I do not. What my (Living Saint) husband and I do have is an (Exceptionally Intelligent and Advanced) godson to whom I have certain obligations, thus this subject is one that I began working on the day my sister-in-law peed on a stick.
Our godson is now ten, and enjoys a rich online life in accordance with the principles set out above. I have no idea what terrible things he may talk about with strangers, outside certain contingencies relating to the very important and useful tools I have given him, and which will be coming to you soon.
(We also have an alarming number of young nieces and nephews, and, although I can scarcely believe my fingers as they type this, the great-nieces and nephews have begun to trickle in, and all of them, like our godson, practice internet safety as taught by Aunty to their parents and to them, starting the minute their mother emerges triumphant from the bathroom, stick held proudly aloft).
Little Ruggles is chatting with his classmates, in an online chatroom set up by a school official, a teacher, principal, etc. Only kids in his class, to whom he is known and all are known to him - and the teacher, who is always present during chat time, use the chat room. Ruggles and his parents feel confident that the presence of the teacher, and the fact that he is chatting with his classmates, many of whom are neighbors and friends, all work together to make their child's online time a safe experience. In fact, Ruggles has been taught, and is only allowed to chat online with friends and neighbors his parents know. He likes being able to talk to his friends online, and make plans for real-life play dates.
Little Ratson is chatting with a complete stranger, about absolutely terrible things. He is using a nick related to a popular cartoon. Nothing in his "profile" gives any clue as to his real name or location, nor does anything in any data accessible to the stranger.** Nothing on his hard disk contains anything that might link any of his online personas to the real little boy. Ratson cannot remember a time without the internet, one of the first things he learned, right up there with not talking to strangers in public places, and remembering to use the bathroom when he needed to poop, was to never, ever reveal any real life info to people on the internet, that offline and online are always to be kept just as separate as his dirty big boy pants from the clean ones. He enjoys making up different identities. Sometimes, like today, he might be that favorite cartoon character. Other times he is a fantastic creature from outer space. But he would never, ever be Ratson or Sonrat, or Rat Sonic, or be from anywhere near Townville, only other planets.
Which child is safer?
Almost all parents are going to read the first sentence about what Ratson is doing and say Ruggles.
And they would be wrong. Potentially dangerously, tragically wrong.
Ratson is the one who is playing it safe, and Ruggles is the one who is engaging in dangerous online activity.
Q) But wait - didn't you say all the kids in his class are there, and the teacher?
A) I did, and they are all in more danger from their online chatting than Ratson.
It is precisely because their real life identities are known that they are in danger. Who is standing behind that little neighbor child, as he chats to yours? Who may have obtained unauthorized access to another classmate - even the teacher's computer, and thus gained access to email addresses and online nicks that are connected to real life children in a known location?
The Internets are here to stay. They are, and will continue to be, a part of your child's life.
The priority we give, and the zeal with which we teach our children about internet safety and security should not only equal, but surpass, the urgency and intensity we bring to bear when we instill values and practices with regard to toilet training.
Q) Well, OK, but couldn't that bad person who was standing behind the chair and watching the chat be present when he goes over to play with the little neighbor children at their houses?
A) Yes. There is always that chance that a bad person may be visiting even our nicest neighbors, who have no idea that he is a bad person.
No matter how much we might want to, it is not possible to protect our children 100% from every possibility that a bad person might see them, be in the same place they are. You could, and here are people who do, take drastic measures, such as never allowing the child to visit any neighbors or friends, go on school trips, or even school itself!
However, most parents want their kids to enjoy, within the bounds of common sense safety precautions, "normal" childhood experiences, like learning to play and share with other kids, participate in group activities etc.
That's what this is about - a very important common sense safety precaution.
Q) Sorry to interrupt, but what is so bad about the school chat room? All the other kids are doing it, and we are all in agreement that we can't protect them from every single possibility of every unsafe thing!
A) There are two reasons. The first has to do with a basic principle of security and safety practices that we all employ:
Layering. We don't just keep our bank card in a zipped compartment of our wallet, we keep that wallet in a zipped purse, and we keep that purse attached to our person, or at the very least, in our sight or under lock and key, no matter where we go. There's three layers right there.
And should someone manage to get that card anyway, our bank has even more layers to protect us.
Layering means that not only do we lock our door when we go on vacation, we make arrangements for someone to come by and turn lights on and off, collect mail, water plants, turn on the TV, make it look like someone is home!
The second reason that school chat room is more dangerous than an anonymous chat with the most awful stranger you, as a parent, can possibly imagine, is that information in real life, while it has the potential to travel, is much more likely to stay put, or to travel to a dead end, whereas information on the internet is potentially available to millions of people - forever.
That cannot be said of your debit card, even if you drop it in front of the ATM (unless, of course, someone puts the data on the internet)
You may trust the teacher, you may trust the neighbor family, but can you say the same of the entity that obtains unauthorized access to their computer?
So not only does participation in that non-anonymous school chat room take away A layer of protection, the layer it takes away is a pretty damn important one!
The vilest person in the world, as long as he does not know your child's name, your name, or where your child is, even if he would like to, cannot harm your child.
Thus it is Little Ratson who is safe, and Little Ruggles who is playing the danger game.
Q) But what about the emotional danger to Little Ratson, in there talking about terrible things with a bad person?
A) That is a valid concern, and one that deserves, and will get, its own topic. There are tools you can give your child that will help with that, even prevent it, but be warned that these tools are for your child, not you, and you will not like them one bit.
But for now, both you and everybody else who can just see somebody standing behind that chair need to know that while no, we cannot eliminate every single possibility that a bad person will obtain access to your child, there is a lot that we CAN do, things that ARE within our realistic and sustainable control.
And for that reason I am starting with the most basic and immediate kind of danger, with the goal of maintaining Little Ratson physically alive and whole, and thus available as a subject for concern about the emotional danger of talking to the bad person.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
Start early. When they learn to talk, when their hands are first able to grab a mouse, when they develop that first sense of "needing a clean diaper," when you give those first basic lessons about Stranger Danger, make internet safety part of that, just as much, even more important than remembering to tell somebody about that diaper, more important than not pooping on the Authentic antique Isfahan in the living room.
WHAT TO TEACH
The internet is a wonderful place to play and learn. It is especially wonderful because on the internet, you can be anybody or anything, you can imagine! You can be a tiger, a dragon, a space man, a never-before heard of creature that you invented. You can be anybody but you.
Because on the internet, you, the real life you, is a secret. So are mami and papi and little sister. And because where you live is also a most important family-only offline secret thing to talk about that means you can be from any planet you want! You can be from a star, or a galaxy, or a constellation, real ones, or ones you made up! Or you could be from inside a shoe that goes around the world like a moon or a satellite!
You can be as many people or creatures as you want to be. You can even be a teenager, because it is the magical internet!
Of course, the identities you invent are make-believe, pretend ones, so online things have to stay always 100% even-more-important-than-not-pooping-on-the-Authentic-antique-Isfahan separate from real life, offline things.
That is what makes it all magic and fun! That's what makes it big kid, grown-up stuff, getting to have exactly the same rules as mami and papi!
NICKS
Nicks should have no relation to any part of the child's name, your name, a sibling's name, or any real place name.
PASSWORDS
Same as nicks. Even if someone "hacks" your child's password, they will not be hacking into anything that could be extrapolated into real life contact info.
And that is pretty much your basic arsenal. Absolute separation of online and offline. Anything that compromises that, the answer is no. Anything that does not compromise that, go for it!
Yes. There in the back. I can see you've been dying to say something.
Q) If all the kids in his class are doing the chat room, and I don't let him do it, isn't that the same thing as those people who homeschool their child and never let him visit the family across the street or go anywhere or do anything?
A) No. You let him visit the family across the street all the time. And he goes to school with the other kids, plays on a community sports team, takes dance and karate lessons, and participates in children's activities sponsored by one or more local faith-based entities. The only thing all the other kids are doing that he can't do are those non-anonymous chat rooms.
Q) Won't that be causing an issue, calling undue attention to him, making him weird?
A) To the first two, possibly, but only momentarily. As much as the other kids like him, they are still kids, and with no offense meant with respect to how charming and popular your child is, they will soon be much too busy chatting with each other to mourn his absence nearly as much as they ought to, and the only reason we forgive them for that is because they have the consolation of coming over to play with him once chat time is over.
And no, it will not make him weird. You will have to find other ways to do that, and no doubt you will do a fine job.
Q) Come on, isn't this a little extreme? I mean all the kids have each other's emails, and they are texting, so they have his phone number, and their cell phones can connect to the internet, they can even take photos of him with their phones and put those on the internet.
A) Ah, yes! Thanks for reminding me. No photos on the internet, ever. Not of him, not of you, not of siblings, not of your house, or your garden, or the patio, pool, or the new grill. No, not the old grill, either. Nor the beautiful skyline of your town or city, nor any of its attractions, even if it is Tokyo and who could ever possibly find you there? Would you really want to find out?
And double Thanks for making a very valid point. It is indeed possible for a classmate - or a stranger in the street - to use their phone to take photos of your child and put them on the internet. They can even run them through Photoshop, and put your child's head on the body of another child, a child who is doing things even more awful than what Little Ratson was talking about with that terrible person.
And there are some very very sick people, as well as some just plain bad people who deliberately seek out even the most innocent photos and writings of identified, non-anonymous children, for their own use, as well as for sale. Just like we have our forums and groups for sharing information, so do they.
But let's get back to your question. You said something about extreme? You wanted to remove a layer of protection that you CAN control?
Yes, I probably misunderstood you. You are right, the acoustics in here do suck.
Q) The only chat room my child is allowed to go to is run by the Temple/Mosque/Church/Drum Circle. I can understand having doubts about the school, but -
A) The danger is not related to the worthiness or trustworthiness of the institution. The danger has to do with your child's real life contact info being on machines you can't control.
Q) This is rEdiculous! His name and our names are already in the school computer.
A) Well, for the sake of argument, let's say that all those records are not only kept on a machine with a modem, but on the very same machine the teacher uses for after-school online chats.
Once you have gotten over the sudden realization that your school is an internet security hot mess, scroll up a couple of paragraphs - no, never mind, I'll paste it. "You wanted to remove a layer of protection that you CAN control?"
Q) OK, OK, I give up. Just stop giving me nightmares. As if I don't have enough of them already.
So what exactly do I SAY to his teachers? To the other parents? What reason do I give for why HE, out of all the other kids, why HE has to be the ONLY one that is not allowed to participate in a school-established, school-run, and school-supervised chat room?
A) If you have a printer, you could put a copy of this in with the note.
Now that you have resolved to do what you CAN to save your own child from being harmed, it can't hurt to at least try to pay it forward. Who knows? You just might save someone else's child.
** To maximize security, privacy and anonymity on your child's computer, you will need to enlist the aid of a nerd. I can say this without qualification, because if YOU had the skillz to do it, you would have done it already - just as you would have done it to your own - the day you first brought it home.
Q) Hold up! I just wanted to ask one more quick question. Do you even HAVE kids?
A) I do not. What my (Living Saint) husband and I do have is an (Exceptionally Intelligent and Advanced) godson to whom I have certain obligations, thus this subject is one that I began working on the day my sister-in-law peed on a stick.
Our godson is now ten, and enjoys a rich online life in accordance with the principles set out above. I have no idea what terrible things he may talk about with strangers, outside certain contingencies relating to the very important and useful tools I have given him, and which will be coming to you soon.
(We also have an alarming number of young nieces and nephews, and, although I can scarcely believe my fingers as they type this, the great-nieces and nephews have begun to trickle in, and all of them, like our godson, practice internet safety as taught by Aunty to their parents and to them, starting the minute their mother emerges triumphant from the bathroom, stick held proudly aloft).
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