TEENS AND THEIR SECRETS
What’s really on those devices?
CHICAGO Ayrial Miller’s mother is scrolling through the teen’s contacts on social media.
“Who’s this?” asks Jennea Bivens, a.k.a. Mom.
It’s a friend of a friend, Ayrial says.
“Delete it,” her mom says. The 13-year-old’s eyes narrow to a surly squint. “I hate this! I hate this! I hate this!”
Yes, Bivens is one of “those moms.” She makes no apology.
Nor should she, says a retired cybercrimes detective. “There is no such thing as privacy for children,” Rich Wistocki says.
Today ’s kids are meeting strangers, some of them adults, on a variety of apps.
Teens are storing risqué photos in disguised vault apps, and then trading those photos like baseball cards. Some even have secret “burner” phones to avoid parental monitoring, or share passwords with friends who can post on their accounts when privileges are taken away.
David Coffey, a tech expert from Michigan, said he was floored when his two teens told him about some of the sneaky things their peers are doing. “I gotta hand it to their creativity, but it’s only enabled through technology.”
Experts like Wistocki and Coffey, and many teens themselves say it’s surprisingly common for kids to live invisible online lives. Wistocki says giving a kid this “ominous device” — and allowing them free rein, including charging in their rooms at night — is like handing over the keys to a new Mercedes and saying, “Sweetheart you can go to Vegas ... New York, wherever you want ...”
Dawn Iles- Gomez, a school principal, says her days are increasingly filled with drama that begins on social media.
“It’s shocking — the language and the threats and the mean things that are said,” she says. “And I would say 75 per cent of the time, I call a parent and their parent will say, ‘ Well, no, they said they didn’t do that.’
“And I’m like, ‘ Well — they did.’” In January, two 12-year-olds were arrested in Florida, for cyberstalking that led to the suicide of a classmate named Gabriella Green, who had been repeatedly bullied.
In other instances, young people are buying drugs via social media or encrypted websites. Law enforcement officials say the taking and sharing of racy “sexting ” photos and videos also has become a common component of teen dating life.
Last year in a Chicago suburb, a 16-year-old killed himself after police discovered he’d recorded himself having sex with a classmate and then shared the recording with his hockey teammates.
Wistocki says, parents often remain in denial with what he calls “NMK — not my kid.”
A 2016 Pew Research Center survey found only about half of parents said they had ever checked their children’s phone calls and text messages or even friended their kids on social media. They were even less likely to use techbased tools to monitor their teens or block certain apps.
Pam Wisniewski, a computerscience professor at the University of Central Florida, is among those who suggest a gradual loosening of the strings as teens prove they can be trusted.
“I’m almost to the point where I feel like the world would be better off without social media,” says Wisniewski, who studies human computer interaction and adolescent online safety. “But I’m also a pragmatist.”
Rather than cutting off kids from social media, she encourages parents to look for teachable moments. When inappropriate material runs through their feed, for instance, she suggests discussing coping strategies, such as hiding that person’s posts or blocking them.
Sarita Schoenebeck, an assistant professor and director of the Living Online Lab at the University of Michigan, says her research also has found shutting teens out of social media only tends to make them sneakier.
Wistocki tells parents to offer their children the Golden Ticket — no punishment when they come to them about mistakes they ’ve made online or help they need with a social media problem.
Ayrial still isn’t happy that her mom is going through her contacts with her.
“When I’m in high school, that might get embarrassing sometimes, you know?” she says. “... You need to learn from your own mistakes.”
If Mom doesn’t give her that space, she says, she’s always coming up with new tricks to get online secretly.
And no, she won’t share how.