Old Fart

Yup that's me.

A few years ago I tattled on my little cousin for posting drinking pictures to her Facebook page. At the time she was just 14 years old and I was shocked to see pictures of her completely wasted for all the world to see with comments from her friends referencing other activities they had participated in that evening (use your imagination). I mean, maybe I'm just an old fart. but back in my day you tried and hide that type of incriminating evidence.

Nowadays, kids are so haphazard. It's like they have no filter. I understand that she thought she was just sharing the photos with her friends, but didn't it occur to her that I was also her "friend" and would see them and would perhaps tell my mother who would perhaps tell her mother and ban her from Facebook? I know, I'm an evil evil cousin.

The situation I'm describing is all too common for the ME generation of kids who have grown up with social media as a part of their daily diet. The level of comfort they experience online allows them to say and post things they might otherwise do in real life.

My suggestion to deal with this issue is a new service called "Two-Facedbook" (patent pending).

What if kids had the option of being able to manage two profiles- one for family and other adult authority figures and another version strictly for friends. On the "clean" version they could post pictures of themselves helping the homeless, feeding squirrels, making their beds. On the other version they could freely post pictures of themselves shooting heroin, having random sex, and other fun yet explicit activities. I'd like to think I'm original but I have a feeling a service like this may already exist.

One other option would be to give kids lessons is digital privacy. That may be more effective in the long term but what do I know, I'm just an old fart.