Posted by Gordon Plutsky on Mon, Sep 27, 2010
A colleague of mine, (let’s call her Mom X) is an experienced media/marketing pro living the suburbs of a U.S. city. She is embarking on a project/experiment to let her Jr. High age daughter wade into the social media world via Face book. This opens up many questions and concerns that parents all over the world are now facing. We are going to follow their progress to give insight to other parents and marketers who want to reach the lucrative youth market. Click here to read the intro to the series.
She does not want to use her name or location to protect her privacy, and more importantly, the privacy of her daughter.
Day 1 – Set Up and Rules
My daughter and I sat down last evening to set up her Face Book page. Our conversation/project kicked off with the review of some important rules:
1. No friending any one ever that you don’t absolutely know. I mean really know, not just random friends of friends.
2. No unfriending me. If AOL Safe Social works the way it says it does, then she won’t be able to “unfriend” me but just in case, I wanted to make sure.
3. No inappropriate links, “likes”, pictures etc. My daughter is smart and she knows me well. She knows what is inappropriate and what is not.
4. No personal information such as phone numbers etc. I have done my research and know that you can track down a lot of information from social networks, but I am going to at least make it difficult!
5. Face Book privileges are rescindable. No second chances. No oops, I forgot. This could be the quickest blog/social networking experiment ever if she doesn’t remember any of these rules!
I guess those are the rules today. Those rules are subject to change, my change. Wow, how George Orwell of me - but since this is my project, I get to make up the rules and change them if I want, anytime. And since she really wants to be on Face Book, she gets to live by them all the time. I inserted my best Smiley Face when explaining that to her.
For the record, she has had her Face book for fewer that 24 hours and already has nearly 30 friends and a long list of “likes and interests”! (Finding Nemo was listed as a favorite movie still; Eminem was listed as being a favorite artist. The first one made me remember that she is still my little girl; the second one made me realize that she is growing up quickly.) I’m sure by the end of week, she will have exceeded me in Friends and who knows what else. The speed and the viral aspects of social media are already starting to make the Momma Bear hair stand up on the back of my neck.
Now let’s talk about AOL Safe Social. My first experience with them was underwhelming at best. I had signed up last week for the program. Went to sign in, couldn’t remember which email address I had used, work or home; forgot my password - OK so that was my bad. But then I ended upon the phone with some call center, that judging by the accent, is located “off shore”. It was a completely frustrating experience thanks to not only the time delay on the call, but the inability of the person on the other end to speak clear English and her inability to understand my American accent.
I get frustrated when calling a United States based company and I get transferred to someone with whom I find myself repeating the answer to her questions over and over. Her English was not that bad, it’s just the clash of her accent and mine made what should have been a 5 minute conversation turn into a 25 minute frustration fest for BOTH of us.
Customer Service suggestion for AOL: I would have had some good ol’ American Moms and Dads on that end of the call. I would have better responded to someone similar to me who was likely using the product and could have also been tech support as well.
Parents are a specific target market, so how about going "all Apple Store” on us and give us customer service reps who REALLY know and use the product they actually sell and support?
Anyway, I have figured out the Safe Social software, enough for the “free trail period”. After the first 30 days it is $9.99/month. I hope it is great for $120/year!
For the next few days, I am going to let my new media daughter navigate the Face book world, find friends and figure it all out on her own. I am sure by Friday she will be teaching me how to use all the features that I have yet to discover. From there our plan is to do some testing just to see how well it works.
Stay tuned.
Mom X
Posted by Gordon Plutsky on Fri, Sep 17, 2010
A colleague of mine, (let’s call her Mom X) is an experienced media/marketing pro living the suburbs of a U.S. city. She is embarking on a project/experiment to let her Jr. High age daughter wade into the social media world via Face book. This opens up many questions and concerns that parents all over the world are now facing. We are going to follow their progress to give insight to other parents and marketers who want to reach the lucrative youth market.
She does not want to use her name or location to protect her privacy, and more importantly, the privacy of her daughter.
First posting below, written by Mom X:
Anyone who has a fast approaching teenager can probably relate to the conversations I have with my oldest daughter, almost daily:
Daughter: “Mom, all my friends are on Facebook. All my friends’ parents let them. All the invitations to parties and other fun stuff are on Facebook. All the pictures and all the conversation and all the..blah blah blah. IT’S ALL ON FACEBOOK AND I AM MISSING IT ALL BECAUSE I AM NOT.”
Me: “No Facebook. You are too young. If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you jump too? (I have been waiting 40 years to say that!) Stranger danger! If your friends want you they can call or text you on the phone that I didn’t want to give you in 5th grade either! ...blah blah blah.”
And like many of you, I am torn. I have researched this topic and found nothing that indicates that our kids are better off if they engage in social media during their developing youth – to the contrary everything is very “Danger, Danger Will Robinson” about the whole topic.
(Here is an excellent resource for those of you researching this topic. - please check out ChildrenOnline.org. Internet Safety is their specialty and we have actually had them speak at our PTO Meetings)
I am torn because while I know that it is a dangerous world out there, I also know that new generations of teenagers are faced with new challenges and social navigation and respectively, their parents must also learn to navigate along with them.
I am certain that my parents had their own brand of social speed bumps in their youth and I certainly remember my teen years with my own pot holes. I am sure that as parents, regardless of the decade, we are always concerned about our children’s wellbeing. Many concerns are universal stay the same no matter the decade:
Who are their friends? Where are they? What are they listening to and what are they reading/watching/seeing? Are they supervised? Have they done their homework?
Long before Tipper Gore, weren’t our grandparents concerned that our parents were listening to Rock and Roll? Do you ever feel a little OLD when you tell your kids that Rap is NOT MUSIC? Except of course, when it is play in Mommy’s spinning class.
I am at a crossroads with my daughter, who is very responsible, smart, kind and has given me no reason ever not to trust her explicitly. However, two major changes recently have occurred in her life. As a result, we have just moved to a new town and a new school so she has left behind a group of dear friends with whom she really wants to remain in contact. Both the new friends and the old friends - are already grizzled vets in the social media world.
Recently, I received an email from AOL pitching their new offering, Safe Social. Among its capabilities: a dashboard that allows me to basically monitor all aspects of my child’s social activities including alerts for inappropriate behavior, postings, friends, photos or activities. I don’t work for AOL, never had an AOL account, but I liked the idea of the product.
After much soul searching, after many “no’s”, and after trying to imagine being a Jr. High-schooler again - I spoke to my daughter and we have decided to embark upon the adventure together. She gets to explore the social networking world and I get to be a helicopter mom of the digital kind. Every move she makes, I’ll be watching her and more importantly, writing about it in this blog. For those of you with kids in this age group, feel free to follow along. My intention is to not only monitor her but report on the experience of using the Safe Social program and hopefully its success. I’ll also be honest about some things it could have done better.
For those of you, who have already gone on this adventure, feel free to send feedback or questions by commenting on this blog. I promise we’ll get back to you
Happy Hunting,
Mom X