I have just discovered that my 11-year-old niece has taken hundreds of videos of herself and her friends doing largely innocent things such as playing and dancing, but also putting on makeup and so on. She also took videos of herself in the bathroom, sitting on the toilet. She has uploaded some to her YouTube channel, but not the bathroom one. I am concerned about her online activity, as I am not around to control it and my parents, who are raising her, are computer illiterate. How do you suggest I deal with the situation?
First thing I suggest is that you contact YouTube and notify them of your niece’s channel. In their terms of service, it’s clearly stated that if you are under 18, a parent or guardian’s consent is required. They also ask that anyone under 13 doesn’t use the service. But of course, this is a short-term fix.
The bigger issue is whether your niece fully grasps appropriate digital and cyber hygiene. It’s a common parenting issue – one that I struggle with on a near daily basis. Although the internet has been around for a while now, it’s still the wild west in many ways. Our digitally native kids don’t understand how their actions can come back to embarrass or harm them later.
It’s good of your parents to take on the responsibility of raising their granddaughter – I’m sure it isn’t easy. But part of parenting today is keeping our children safe in all realms, including the digital and virtual. Let your parents know your concerns and try not to resent their computer naivety. It can be hard to get used to technology – just as it’s hard for our children to understand how we existed without it. My own 11-year-old daughter recently stared at a payphone in an airport and asked how it worked. She thought it would be fun to call her father on it (even though we both had cell phones), and I recognised the same wonder in her eyes that my siblings and I shared the first time we played Pong on the TV on Christmas morning. I just dated myself, but that’s kind of the point.
Offer to help them become more comfortable. Maybe they won’t be joining Snapchat, but they should be aware of their granddaughter’s activities. There are programs you can help them install to monitor what she’s up to. Ideally we’d like our kids to learn to self-monitor, since they are the ones having to navigate this woolly world wide web. After all, it’s only going to get more complicated.
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