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In the world of teen chat KPC is better than TMI, IMHO In the world of teen chat KPC is better than TMI, IMHO
(about 3 hours later)
As a concerned parent, with my youngest just back to school today, I should apparently be spending my time studying her phone suspiciously and working myself into a frenzy of alarm. Obviously this is not going to happen – partly because she takes her phone to school, but mainly because I can’t be bothered. Bizarre as it may seem, I consider parenting to be about more than round-the-clock surveillance. Clearly I am out of step, as surveillance is now a huge part of teenage life. My daughter has, for instance, been instructed to take a see-through pencil case to school. Is she now flying there, I wonder, with bomb-making materials and class A drugs hidden among her highlighter pens? Well, you never know.As a concerned parent, with my youngest just back to school today, I should apparently be spending my time studying her phone suspiciously and working myself into a frenzy of alarm. Obviously this is not going to happen – partly because she takes her phone to school, but mainly because I can’t be bothered. Bizarre as it may seem, I consider parenting to be about more than round-the-clock surveillance. Clearly I am out of step, as surveillance is now a huge part of teenage life. My daughter has, for instance, been instructed to take a see-through pencil case to school. Is she now flying there, I wonder, with bomb-making materials and class A drugs hidden among her highlighter pens? Well, you never know.
Related: Teenage chat guide helps parents spot online dangersRelated: Teenage chat guide helps parents spot online dangers
New advice from the Department for Education online service Parent Info is meant to give parents tips on how to help teenagers navigate the online world safely. It seems to have been put together by someone who has never met or indeed ever been a teenager. It offers helpful translations for parents: GNOC means get naked on camera; P999 is parent alert; IWSN stands for I want sex now; POS is parent over shoulder; and 420 is the code for marijuana. LOL as apparently no one says that any more.New advice from the Department for Education online service Parent Info is meant to give parents tips on how to help teenagers navigate the online world safely. It seems to have been put together by someone who has never met or indeed ever been a teenager. It offers helpful translations for parents: GNOC means get naked on camera; P999 is parent alert; IWSN stands for I want sex now; POS is parent over shoulder; and 420 is the code for marijuana. LOL as apparently no one says that any more.
Look I am not being flippant. Kids do get in trouble online and they are mostly online via their phones. Anxious parents buy their children handheld computers partly because of peer pressure, and partly because we fool ourselves that they will act as tagging devices. “We will always know where they are.” The reality is, in fact, sleepness nights: “My battery was going and I didn’t want to use it up on you.”Look I am not being flippant. Kids do get in trouble online and they are mostly online via their phones. Anxious parents buy their children handheld computers partly because of peer pressure, and partly because we fool ourselves that they will act as tagging devices. “We will always know where they are.” The reality is, in fact, sleepness nights: “My battery was going and I didn’t want to use it up on you.”
To give our drug-addled, oversexed teenagers some credit, we can be sure that the minute their parents work out what they are talking about online they will move on to other codes and spaces to chat. Show me the parent who really understands Snapchat, WhatsApp, Slack or Kik and I will show you a liar or a scary control freak.To give our drug-addled, oversexed teenagers some credit, we can be sure that the minute their parents work out what they are talking about online they will move on to other codes and spaces to chat. Show me the parent who really understands Snapchat, WhatsApp, Slack or Kik and I will show you a liar or a scary control freak.
Related: A grown-up's guide to sexting (or, why you should stop worrying about what your teenagers get up to online) | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett
This is not to minimise serious problems of cyberbullying, sexting going public, revenge porn – all of them subsets of bullying really – and the ever-feared paedophile. But the incessant worrying about teenage braggadocio is a sideshow to the number of rapes and sexual assaults currently being reported in school IRL. What is the link between online behaviour and these levels of abuse? That would be worth analysing.This is not to minimise serious problems of cyberbullying, sexting going public, revenge porn – all of them subsets of bullying really – and the ever-feared paedophile. But the incessant worrying about teenage braggadocio is a sideshow to the number of rapes and sexual assaults currently being reported in school IRL. What is the link between online behaviour and these levels of abuse? That would be worth analysing.
Related: MOOS, POS and other teen internet slang every parent urgently needs to know
Sex and drugs existed long before every kid had a phone and some daft acronyms are not really the issue here. There is now a dividing line between those – such as education minister Nicky Morgan – whose talk about the internet as a new tool to help us learn and stay in touch, as though it’s a recent invention, and a generation for whom it is the weather, a tool only in the sense that electricity is a tool. Yes, it’s hard to protect kids and to give them privacy when their definitions of what privacy means continue to freak us out, but that’s exactly what has to be done. KPC - keeping parents clueless – is something they text apparently. Seems to me they don’t have to. Acronyms or not, we’re still as clueless as ever. What parents actually can’t cope with is TMI.Sex and drugs existed long before every kid had a phone and some daft acronyms are not really the issue here. There is now a dividing line between those – such as education minister Nicky Morgan – whose talk about the internet as a new tool to help us learn and stay in touch, as though it’s a recent invention, and a generation for whom it is the weather, a tool only in the sense that electricity is a tool. Yes, it’s hard to protect kids and to give them privacy when their definitions of what privacy means continue to freak us out, but that’s exactly what has to be done. KPC - keeping parents clueless – is something they text apparently. Seems to me they don’t have to. Acronyms or not, we’re still as clueless as ever. What parents actually can’t cope with is TMI.