kids these days

A bunch of kids in Squire's class have facebook accounts. They're posting things that I, as a parent, would not want my child posting. Even if the account is locked, one can still see all the things of which they are "fans" and so on. So for example, I know that this 12 year old classmate of his, real first and last name, is interested in meeting men, long passionate kisses, and looking at men's asses in tight pants. What to think?

a. The parents know, and they don't care.
b. The parents don't know, and don't care.
c. The parents don't know, but would care.
d. other.

An American friend of mine suggested bringing this up at the school; that the school should have some kind of program to address it. To my knowledge, nothing along the lines of internet-savvy behavior is part of the curriculum. I don't know if kids are taught about it at all. Certainly Czech television doesn't have James Lipton telling them to give it a ponder. Is this a situation where one sticks one's head in, or not? I worry about these kids just putting more of themselves out there than they would if they were thinking straight; I worry about somebody getting hurt. Some pretty shitty things happened to me when I was a teenager that would not have happened if I had been prepared for them; there's stuff I would have avoided if I'd known how to. It is also true that I was warned very sternly not to do things that I went ahead and did. So maybe this risking of yourself is part of growing up?

What would you do?

Comments

[Julia@kolo]

I think the school could talk about it. Facebook is huge in the Czech Republic and it has gotten so in such a short time (from 300k to 2 million people in the last 12 months) that I'm guessing schools haven't realized the ramifications yet. But they will shortly so better to have it pointed out to them now before the kids get hurt. They talk about drugs to first graders. Why not facebook to 5th?

[tuckova]

Julia- Did you see this:
http://aktualne.centrum.cz/czechnews/clanek.phtml?id=658326

It's clearly not just kids who are unaware of using caution in what information they're putting out. How much information does this sicko have from the people that joined, I wonder. And what are they going to use it for? Thanks for thinking I should take it to the school - that will be fun, huh?

[babelbabe]

I wouldn't put the sole burden on the school. I would call or email the kids' parents. Seriously. Random Internet predators preying on, for example, kids playing on Poptropica are not as prevalent as news media would have us think BUT kids posting stuff like that on sites like FB and mySpace are exactly the sorts of target the predators zoom in on.

My kids are too young for FB but when they are old enough and want an acct, they will be required to friend me so I can check up on them.

[tuckova]

Babelbabe - I think the burden should be on the parents, not the school, but if the parents are ignorant, then the school could at least alert them to their ignorance? I'm pretty internet-savvy, but I do get that it's not necessarily the norm. Thanks for weighing in, though. I can talk to some of the parents personally, anyway.

[mig]

The burden s/b on the parents. It would be smart, though, for someone to point out potential problems to them. The school is a good candidate. No way would I talk to parents myself, unless they were friends.