Casey forwarded this Seth Godin podcast to me in which Godin shares some interesting advice about raising kids in the Internet age where, through social media and the ability to both connect and share, kids grow up “living a life out loud.”
It’s not unusual for a teenager to have connections with hundreds, even thousands of people online. Those connections aren’t necessarily personal, but anyone who puts up a YouTube video, or posts a picture of themselves, or writes a blog, tweet, or social media post—all of those things can be viewed and shared by other people. And that’s a much different universe than the one parents lived in before the Internet arrived on the scene, when youthful indiscretions and teenage bad judgment had a much shorter shelf life.
While some kids brazenly share their life online with no thought of potential consequences, others are using it as a chance to contribute, organize, help people, share technical innovations, or find other ways to leave a mark. By embracing the Internet as an opportunity to leave behind things that make them proud, those kids are getting into a good habit.
And here’s Godin’s take on the parent’s role in guiding your kids through the new universe:
“As parents we’re often pushed to make this choice. And the choice is to keep your kids out of the connection world and isolate them and make sure they’re ‘safe.’ Or, put your kids into the world and all hell will break loose. Those are the things that they talk about at the PTA meetings. And I don’t think that’s the choice. I think the choice is—everyone is in the world now. Everyone is connected. You cannot keep your 12-year-old from hearing profanity. Get over it. But given that they’re in the world, what trail are they going to leave? What mark are they leaving? Are they doing it just to get into college, or are they doing it because they understand that their role as a contributor to society starts now when they’re 10, not when they’re 24, and that the trail they leave behind starts the minute someone snaps their picture? And if we can teach children that there isn’t this bright line between off duty and on duty, but that life is life and you should live it like people are looking at you because they are, then we trust them. And we trust them to be bigger than they could be because they choose to be bigger. And it’s that teaching, I think, that is so difficult to do as a parent because what you really want to do is protect them and lock them up until it’s time. But the bravest thing to do is have these free range kids who are exploring the edges of the universe, but doing it in a way that they’re proud of, not hiding from.”