A Tip Tease

OK, so you don’t think you really need any tips to parent your teen? Or you just think that you don’t need one more email cluttering up your inbox? Or you think we don’t have very good ideas about tips for you? With all of these being a possibility, we decided to tempt you with a little “tip tease.” If we give you a really, really good tip right here on our blog front page, maybe you would think it’s worth your time and effort to sign up for our Teen Tips where you will be getting one tip each week. So – here goes…..

Go Facebooking together. No, seriously. We all use Facebook as a noun on occasion. You need to go Facebooking with your teen.

It has been all over the news recently that some companies are requesting perspective employees to disclose their Facebook log in prior to being hired for the job. There is a lot of discussion about this issue, and we will be talking about those details in our next post. But when it comes to your teen, getting their Facebook log in information is a requirement for being allowed to have a Facebook page at all. You will have their log in – and you will “friend” them and be accepted as their friend. These are your two ways of monitoring your child’s Facebook behavior.

We can talk about the issues and discussions this will raise between you and your teen and how angry they will probably be that you don’t “trust” them. But what if you went Facebooking with them. Get online together. You might have dueling laptops or just bring your laptop over to wherever the computer is in your house (also another post in our teens and technology series). Then you log on to your Facebook account the same time as your teen does. Show them how you manage your privacy settings. Show them how many dumb things show up on your wall and what you do with them. Get them to talk about what’s on their Facebook page. I think you are getting the idea here.

We think of Social Media as a solitary activity. It never is – it’s just we can’t see the other folks involved, unless we are standing next to the computer.

See – good tip, huh. Don’t you want to sign up for our 52 Tips for Teens now? Just put your name and email address in the sign up form on the sidebar. Happy Tipping.