Evan Skinner

June 2, 2008 tati8

EVAN SKINNER
Mother of four teenagers; former president of Chatham High School Parent Teacher Organization

My fear isn’t that I have bad kids; my fear is that my good kids will make a bad decision, one bad judgment and pay for it permanently, whether that’s a pedophile, whether that’s a stalker, whether that’s having an inappropriate photograph on Facebook that’s then used as a screening device for college admissions or future employment. Kids learn from making mistakes, but they shouldn’t be penalized for those mistakes forever. And the computer — I mean, somebody once said to me, “If it’s on the Net, it’s open to anyone. There are no safeguards. Someone can always find everything.” …

Do I think that my kids are having sketchy, inappropriate sharing of communication on Facebook? Yeah, probably, in the same way that I did on the phone, locked in a closet when I was sixteen and living at home. So I do feel that we need to give them a little bit of space. It is their phone; I mean, it is where they share.

But going back to my fears about the permanence of that information, there’s a middle ground someplace that I think is tremendously polarizing between parents and kids. I think that kids feel like, “Stay the heck out of this; this is mine; get out, get out, get out.” And parents are like, “Let me in, let me in, let me in.” And there’s hardly any way to get in.