This past weekend I was fortunate to be asked to present a series of seminars on Social Media Smarts for Teens at Morry's Camp, a wonderful program for youth development that attracts kids from all over New York and Connecticut. It was a great experience on a number of levels. First of all, I haven't been in a classroom of kids in a long time, and it was exhilarating (and exhausting) to connect with kids from grades 6-11 on a subject I feel that I know pretty well and that I can get pretty animated about. Second, they seemed to actually listen to what I had to say and they had great questions for me and brought their own real-life examples into the mix. And third, preparing for the sessions was a great way for me to look at social media from a different perspective - not from my jaded I-read-social-media-pundit-blogs-daily point-of-view, but through the lens of everyday users, many of whom are just starting to explore the connections and social capabilities that these platforms have to offer.
I put a lot of time into thinking about both the smart ways to engage in social media and also the safety issues that teens might run into when they start Facebooking, Tweeting or posting videos to YouTube. I wanted to provide constructive how-tos for them and some positive ways to engage, but did also want to scare them just a tiny bit - so I did tell them some horror stories about people who have not gotten offered jobs or who have been fired for their social media activities. We also talked about physical safety concerns, like not friending anyone online who you don't actually know in real life, and never meeting people in real life that you only know online. Some of these thoughts made me think back to my own early internet experiences making friends on AOL - the issues and concerns are really very much the same.
Though I presented the seminars without a computer (camp is pretty low-tech) and used Word handouts, I've compiled all of the info into the following Powerpoint presentation so that others who need to discuss this subject with teens in their lives can make use of it.
Do you have a teen in your life that uses social media? Do you have an opportunity to influence them in any way? If so, please share the advice you've given them in the comments below.