A dad knew that his daughter had been using askfm, a popular and dangerous site/app that teens use. For those of you who aren't familiar with askfm, here is how it works. You can either go to askfm.com and sign up or you can download the app. The appeal of this for teens is the ability to post on people's profiles completely anonymously. Here is how it works. I post a profile and ask a question; Do you think I am a good parenting coach?? Some people may write, oh yes your the best or some may post, you suck!!! Whatever is posted I will not know who you are. Sometimes kids ask silly questions and sometimes not. You can post on someone's askfm even if they haven't asked a question. So if I don't like you, I can go to your profile and post all the things I hate about you. As you can see, it is ripe for bullying. Also ripe for complete strangers to post on your profile. That is the story I will tell.
Back to the dad. He had learned about askfm and knew his 7th grade daughter had a profile on it. He made her go on when he was there and delete her account. Done, right??? No way. Of course his daughter could go right back and put up another profile as soon as her dad left the room, which of course she did. This savvy dad had a suspicion that this might happen, so a week later, he goes on ask fm and looks for his daughter's profile. He finds it!! He decides to teach her lesson. He posts to his daughter 's profile: (remember his name and profile do not appear)"hey, you're cute, where do you go to school?" She writes back with the name of the school. He asks, "oh where is that school?' She tells him the town. She has now made herself easy to be found! Then he asks her if she has an instagram account, and she says yes. Then he says"hey I am a really great photo editor, give me your instagram password and I can do some really cool things with your photos." SHE GIVES HIM HER PASSWORD....A TOTAL STRANGER WHO DOESN'T EVEN HAVE A NAME!!!!!!!!! And if this wasn't bad enough, this whole askfm conversation took place during the time she was in school. The dad was curious to see if he posted during school hours would she respond. And yup...she did. Good case for shutting off your teen's phone during school, and making sure that if his/her school uses phones or tablets during school that they are monitoring what the kids are during. This girl was in a class, not a study when she responded to this!!!!
When the dad confronted his daughter, at the least he expected her to be embarrassed, upset, something to show that indeed it was scary how easily she shared her personal info....lesson learned!!! Instead what he heard from his daughter was: "its no big deal, everybody does it!! Why are you such a worry wort!!!"
I have to admit, I was surprised, I thought what a great way to teach his daughter this lesson. Our teens are immune to fear. We are not getting them to hear the dangers of sharing information with complete and total strangers. This is your job, to regularly educate your kids. Go online, (I found these articles by googling dangers of instagram or dangers of askfm. As part of the PRIVILEGE of having a phone or laptop or tablet, your teen should be responsible for spending time with you REGULARLY to learn about the dangers of over-sharing. They will not learn through one conversation of a "you are not allowed to.....) Learning takes repetition, repetition, repetition!!! And you will have to be their teacher, since there is literally no one else!
http://www.wrdw.com/home/headlines/News_12_On_Your_Side_162121545.html
http://www.hightechdad.com/2013/06/05/parents-be-warned-ask-fm-is-a-dangerous-deadly-social-site-for-teens-tweens/
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