Post: Blogs Are The New Diaries
Blogs Are The New Diaries
For many of us, keeping a diary as a teen meant opening up a journal or notebook and writing or drawing.
It was a way to have an inner dialogue with yourself about your day, what you did and how you felt. Sometimes it was just a listing of what you did that day or creating a To Do list for tomorrow. Sometimes it was pages of angst about being rejected by the boy you liked, a fight with a friend, or anger at your parents over being grounded.
Today's teens are still keeping diaries -- and some of them are still keeping written diaries, but most are blogging because it's just easier. Here are my suggestions for topics to talk to teens about when it comes to keeping an online journal:
- Personal information: Are you using your real name (first and last)? If so, how about just using your first or coming up with a fun moniker. Obviously teens shouldn't post their home address. Posting their high school is questionable, but definitely not advised if they are posting their real first name with a photo. As a parent, you have to decide what combination of identifying information you're comfortable with. If they choose not to make their journal private for only their friends, the safest public journal is obviously a moniker with no photos. Next would be a first name with no photos, etc.
- Writing about feelings and emotions: If teens are keeping a personal diary online, are they OK with the world knowing about their deepest feelings and emotions? Have your teens do the exercise of thinking about reading their journal entry in front of a room full of strangers. If it feels OK, then it probably is. What about when they involve other people? Are they writing about another person in a way that makes it easy for reader who knows them to identity that person? If that person found out, how would they feel?
- Venting: Whether a teen is venting about a friend, a parent, a teacher or even the President of the United States, they have to realize that someone reading could take whatever he or she is writing seriously. Teens have been expelled, investigated by the Secret Service and have had friendships ruined over writing something on a blog they didn't really mean. When talking about venting with teens, I would tell them it's probably best to reserve these posts for an old fashioned paper notebook kept somewhere private.
Read the complete entry on Anastasia's Totally Wired blog, where it first appeared. For more on keeping kids safe online, download our free Internet safety guide, in which you'll find more advice about blogs.