Raising Humans in a Digital World

by Diana Graber

  Students realize they missed some important details about Kate as well. Her school’s website had not been updated in nearly a year, which explains why she did not appear in its honor society list.

  Oftentimes, this closer inspection leaves my students feeling deflated. “It’s not fair,” they say. “It’s so easy for mistakes to happen online, even mistakes that aren’t your fault. Plus, sometimes other people post stuff about you that’s not true.” They also say, “Kids joke around online a lot,” and they wonder if adults can tell when kids post things in jest, or when they are being sarcastic. “Do adults take all of this into consideration?” they want to know. My answer? Maybe, but don’t count on it.

  PEOPLE ARE JUDGING YOU BY WHAT THEY SEE ONLINE

  Just as my students made snap judgments about the two fictional applicants, based on a cursory review of each one’s digital billboard, people in real life do this all the time. Bradley Shear, a D.C.-based lawyer specializing in social media law, thinks this is a big problem. In an interview with the New York Times, Shear says, “Colleges might erroneously identify the account of a person with the same name . . . or even mistake an impostor’s account—as belonging to the applicant, potentially leading to unfair treatment. ‘Often . . . false and misleading content online is taken as fact.’”17

  As founder and general counsel of a company called Digital Armour, Shear advises students, professionals, and corporate clients about the legal, privacy, reputation, and security issues inherent in the digital age. “Kids are going to make mistakes,” says Shear. “Why should these mistakes be tied to them for the rest of their lives?”18

  Shear told me about a client of his who had been admitted into one of the most prestigious universities in the world. This applicant had his offer and a $250,000 scholarship revoked because of an alleged inappropriate Facebook like and an emoji about the 2016 presidential election.

  “This was a kid with the highest privacy settings,” Shear said. Despite this, one of the applicant’s “Facebook friends” had taken a screenshot of the alleged inappropriate “like” and emoji, saved it for months, and then sent it anonymously to the admissions office of the school Shear’s client had been accepted to. The school contacted the applicant, who verified the long-deleted “like” and emoji. Subsequently, the applicant’s offer and scholarship were rescinded.

  Shear’s story is eerily similar to one I heard from an admissions officer who works for a California university. She told me she’d received a manila envelope in the mail, no return address, filled with screenshots allegedly from the “fake” social media accounts of a female applicant. A note that accompanied the images claimed they were being sent by another prospective student. It read, “You need to know what this girl is really like; she’s not as squeaky-clean as you think.”

  “The envelope was filled with half-naked selfies, posts strewn with foul language,” the admissions officer told me. “Not only could I not believe what I was seeing, I also couldn’t believe that another student would go to such lengths to bring this to my attention. I thought to myself, ‘Is this really what we’ve come to?’”

  According to Shear, “Colleges, graduate schools, and employers do not revoke offers because applicants lack a robust digital life; however, they have and will continue to reject applicants if they find something online that raises a question about an applicant’s character, integrity, or judgment.”19

  Please tell your kids that anything they say or do online, or that others say or do about them, speaks volumes about their character. And that character still matters.

  GEE, THANKS, MOM AND DAD!

  Remember the infant in the delivery room, whose digital reputation was born the moment that first photo was posted on Facebook or Instagram? She’s not alone. Many of her peers’ digital reputations debuted with their sonograms! Today, children’s digital reputations are largely constructed, without their knowledge or consent, by the people who love them the most. It starts out innocently enough—expectant mothers eager to share the results from an ultrasound, fathers proud to share pictures shortly after birth, and grandparents happy to post pictures from parties, holidays, family gatherings, and on and on. All of this adds up and, before you know it, a child’s digital billboard is packed with information.

  Consider this:

  •Ninety-two percent of two-year-old children already have an online profile, with photos and information having been posted within weeks of their birth.20

  •Thirty-two percent of parents say they upload, on average, eleven to twenty new photos of their child per month.21

  •Parents post an average of 1,500 images of children on social media before their fifth birthday.22

  •Twenty-eight percent of parents said they never thought to ask their child if they minded their parents uploading images of them online.23

  When teaching students about their digital reputations, I hear an earful about their parents’ posting habits. I’m sorry to report that kids are not at all happy about the photos, videos, posts, and more that the well-meaning adults in their lives have shared on their behalf for years. Sometimes they even ask me to intercede on their behalf. Even if I had the guts to do so (I don’t) my interventions would be a decade or more too late. In their parents’ defense, I tell my students that much of what their parents have posted about them is positive stuff and will go far in helping them make a good online impression upon others. Yet that’s not how my students see it. They feel their digital reputations are theirs to create and that they have been robbed of this opportunity.

  OVERSHARENTING

  There’s a digital-age name for this: sharenting, or in extreme cases, oversharenting. This term describes when parents share the details of their children’s lives online. Sue Scheff, author of Shame Nation: Choosing Kindness and Compassion in an Age of Cruelty and Trolling, and I have discussed this phenomenon at length. She’s one the best people to turn to for advice on this topic, because dramatic events in her own life have made her one of the world’s foremost experts on digital reputation building and management. In 2003, she became the unsuspecting target of a spiteful client who attacked her maliciously online—spreading rumors, accusations, and lies that ended up wreaking havoc on Scheff’s digital reputation. Scheff fought back in court and, in the end, won a landmark $11.3 million judgment for defamation and invasion of privacy, which she wrote about in her second book, Google Bomb. Despite her court victory, Scheff’s digital reputation had taken a beating, and it took many years of concentrated effort to rebuild it. Today she works tirelessly to help others avoid a similar fate and, more importantly, advises adults and youth on how to maintain a positive online presence.

  “I think parents need to be more mindful of what they are sharing online altogether,” says Scheff. “What they need to remember is with today’s technology, you are never exactly sure who is going to see what you post because it becomes instantly global.” One of her top recommendations to parents who want to post images of their children is to take advantage of Facebook’s “list” feature. “When you create a list on Facebook, you can easily narrow down who your posts are seen by. So, if you want to share photos and videos of your kids, you can make sure they are seen by a select list of just family and friends, for example,” says Scheff. “Remember, kids are sensitive about what you post.”24

  It’s not just parents who post embarrassing things about their kids online. Often, kids post embarrassing things about themselves that they will regret later. I learned this one day when my eighteen-year-old daughter burst into my office to ask, “Why in the world did you let me open an account on Facebook when I was in eighth grade? What were you thinking?” This caught me by surprise. I thought I’d done a good job putting off her request for social media until her thirteenth birthday, the minimum age to open a Facebook account. Plus, I checked her posts back then, and they seemed fine to me, even if they were a bit dorky and childish. “What’s the problem?” I asked, curious.

  She was
in the process of finding potential roommates at the college she’d been accepted to and discovered that kids were checking each other out by viewing their social media accounts. She was mortified by embarrassing photos and posts from years earlier that were still visible and impossible to hide. Even if she deleted items she had posted, friends had tagged her, and now these embarrassing images showed up on feeds she had no control over. “You need to warn your students about this,” she told me. “No kid that young should ever be allowed to use social media!”

  WHEN YOUNG KIDS USE SOCIAL MEDIA

  She’s probably right. The thirteen-year-old brain may not be ready for social media. Even though most kids can start thinking logically, and then ethically, around age twelve or thirteen, recent advances in brain imaging reveal that certain parts of the brain are not fully functional until about age twenty-five. One of the last areas of the brain to fully mature is the prefrontal cortex, which is largely responsible for rational thought and good judgment, two capacities that come in handy when using social media. Without a fully developed prefrontal cortex, teens process information with their amygdala, or their emotions, and that makes them more likely to:

  •Act on impulse

  •Misread or misinterpret social and emotional cues

  •Engage in dangerous or risky behavior25

  Although a teenager might understand the possible consequences of posting a stupid selfie online, the part of his brain that should be warning, “Hey, hold on a minute—better not post this one,” isn’t fully operational yet. So guess what happens? The unfortunate image gets posted, shared, and might come back to haunt him later.

  But try explaining this to a thirteen-year-old itching to use Instagram (assuming you’ve been able to hold your kid off that long). Instead of arguing with irrational teens about their irrationality, you might have better luck imparting this simple advice I learned from Scheff. The moment your children open their first social media accounts, tell them to practice what she calls “The Three Cs”:

  •Conduct. Be mindful of how you act online. Remember, a person is on the other side of the screen.

  •Content. Think about what you share. Ask yourself: Will it embarrass or humiliate me or someone else?

  •Caring. Be thoughtful, kind, and caring. Remember to post with empathy for others.

  HUMBLEBRAGGING

  In an effort not to be viewed as conceited in their social media posts, some users resort to a strategy known as “humblebragging.” A humblebrag is a “self-deprecating yet self-promoting” post.26 It’s a specific type of bragging that tries to hide itself behind a complaint or even a feeble attempt at humility.

  In a study that explores this phenomenon, researchers cite the following “humblebrag” examples:

  •I have no idea how I got accepted to all the top schools.

  •People keep telling me how cute I am. Awkward.

  •I am so exhausted from getting elected to leadership positions all the time.27

  It turns out these seemingly self-effacing statements meant to impress seldom have that effect upon the reader. People find them insincere and view those who humblebrag as less likable than those who outright brag or sincerely complain.

  If you want to brag on social media, current research suggests you should go ahead and do so!

  CREATING A MINDSET THAT DIGITAL ACTIONS ARE PUBLIC AND PERMANENT®

  One of the hardest-working people I know is Richard Guerry, founder and executive director of The Institute for Responsible Online and Cellphone Communication (IROC2). Guerry zigzags across the country delivering high-energy, information-packed workshops to students and offering on-demand videos to the schools he doesn’t have time to visit. During the academic year, he is on the road nearly every day “trying to help a generation of kids use their technology to enhance their lives, not hurt themselves.”28 In 2017, he was in twenty-three states visiting 225 schools. The calendar on his website leaves you feeling utterly exhausted.

  Guerry’s workshops are centered on his tagline, “Public and Permanent,”® the foundation of what he calls owning a “digital consciousness.” He believes it’s vital to equip the next generation of technology-wielding adults with a mindset that will help them handle whatever new technology comes their way. That boils down to getting them to remember two things:

  •Online actions are public.

  •Online actions are permanent.

  “We want our kids to be able to go to a party or a wedding or a beach, go to college, join a sorority or fraternity—basically do the same things their parents did,” Guerry told me. “They should be able to let loose and be human and not have to worry about someone else taking a picture or filming them and then posting that somewhere. That means we have to help all kids understand that technology is basically the twenty-first-century flame. It can be used for good, or it can burn.”

  Guerry says kids must have empathy for others when they use technology, because they have power over their own reputations as well as their friends’ reputations. “That understanding and change has to start somewhere,” Guerry says. “I figure it starts with every kid I talk to.”

  Despite a rigorous schedule, Guerry remains invigorated by his work, “especially when kids tell me it matters.” This happened recently while Guerry was visiting a public school in Baltimore. A boy who’d been a student at a private all-boys school told him, “Over the summer between my junior and senior years, I went into a ‘quote, unquote’ private Facebook group. I thought it was just me and my friends, but it wasn’t. The school saw some of the stuff we posted, and I got thrown out, and now I’m in public school. How am I going to explain to colleges why I got kicked out of the school I attended my whole life and ended up in public school during my senior year?” With tears in his eyes, this boy told Guerry, “I wish I had heard you speak before last summer.”

  “When you’re looking at a kid in the eyes as he’s telling you this,” says Guerry, “as tired as you are, those are the stories that stay in your head and keep you putting one foot in front of the other.”29

  DIGITAL REPUTATION EDUCATION WORKS

  Just like Alan Katzman, Sue Scheff, Bradley Shear, and Richard Guerry, I’m passionate about helping kids understand the impact of their digital reputations. I’m lucky in that I get access to my students for a full three years, and we revisit this topic again and again. Even so, I often wonder if lessons “stick” when they go home and find themselves alone with their phones. Kids will be kids, and I’ve learned to expect mistakes, or as I like to call them, “teachable moments.”

  Yet kids are full of surprises, too. Billy, my daughter’s bench-making partner you met in Chapter 2, gave me one of my more pleasant surprises a few years ago. He and my daughter were in my first group of Cyber Civics students. I fondly remember those students for teaching me more about what they needed to learn than what I thought I needed to teach them about digital literacy. One morning Billy showed up late for class, burst into the room, and marched up to the desk of a pretty girl named April. April had joined the eighth-grade class that year and thus had missed all our previous digital reputation lessons. She had an Instagram account that most of the kids in the class followed, and the night prior she had posted a selfie. In the photo, taken at the beach, she was wearing a tiny bikini and had struck an extremely provocative pose. It was a photo you’d expect the average, red-blooded, eighth-grade boy to love! But that’s what surprised me. Instead of snickering about the photo behind her back, Billy strode up to April to give her a good scolding. “You should delete that stupid picture you posted,” he said. “It’s gonna ruin your digital reputation.” She sat there for a moment, trying to figure out what the heck Billy was talking about, before dashing out of the classroom in tears. Although I felt sorry for April, and thought Billy’s delivery a bit harsh, it struck me that he’d done what I’d been hoping my students would do: look out for one another in an environment where there are no adults looking out for them. In his crude and somewhat
insensitive manner, Billy had done just that. April went home that day and deleted the post.

  CYBER CIVICS MOMENTS

  Have a Google Party

  Have you ever Googled yourself? Your spouse? Your children? Your relatives or friends? If not, take a moment and do this together with your children, or better yet, as a family. A word of warning, though: You may want to Google yourself and your spouse privately first. This advice was shared with me by a teacher who delivers Cyber Civics lessons at her own school. She had followed my advice to Google herself, but had done it with her entire class watching. Unfortunately, she was caught off-guard by some content that popped up. You just never know.

  Once you’ve done this groundwork, follow these steps:

  1.Together with your children, Google yourself to see what comes up. Review your results, and ask your children: What was positive? What, if anything, was negative? How could you possibly improve your digital reputation?

  2.Next, Google your spouse/relatives/your children/their friends. Try using different search engines, and remember to search any nicknames they may use on social media accounts. Then, ask the same questions as above. Also ask: How might others judge your spouse/relatives/ your children/their friends based on what you found online?

  3.Talk about preventative steps your children might take to balance their digital reputations in favor of positive content.

  4.Finally, consider setting up a “Google Alert” to receive regular updates on your children’s web mentions. This is easily done by signing into a Gmail account, if you have one, and entering the search terms (i.e., your children’s names) that you want Google Alert to track. That way you’ll be notified if something is posted that might impact their digital reputations.