A Superhero for Children’s Privacy

“G, you are going to piss someone off with these.” said a friend. Well, doesn’t that happen to every well-intended blog? 🙂

Dear parents,

Managing children’s privacy is absolutely no different than managing their diet, their sports activities and exercise, or the TV shows you let them watch. All of these require you to learn about them, decide whether it is right for the child(ren), and engage at the level you determine.

(…Until they start making these decisions for themselves (another topic for us to discuss, eh?)

I want to be clear about my message with this blog: There is no one right way to navigate information sharing impacting children’s privacy. It is all a personal choice on what is right for you and your child(ren). All I want is to provide you with the relevant context that will hopefully contribute to your information sharing choices. I want to lay out some information, and potential consequences you might not have heard of, but I don’t intend to set some golden standard to live up to. I will, unavoidably, sound a bit more alarmed than you may hear at the birthday parties. That is because I work in cybersecurity, I went to (an expensive) school for this, and I think about it often.

But even excellent schooling hasn’t stopped me from coming up with a cheesy acronym. I claimed in my project that we need a superhero to help save children’s privacy. Read on to see whom I picked.

T is for Time. We need to invest in the time to learn about the consequences of technology we consume for our children – whose life is happening in the digital realm more than ever.

H is for Habits. We need to look at our own habits consuming technology, social media, connected devices, information sharing. Our children learn these as “the normal” growing up.

O is for Observations. We need to look at how our digital life is reflected in our children’s. How much interest are they showing in social media, or recording life events frequently? How much of their interactions are through an electronic device vs. in-person, with their friends or you?

R is for Reaction/Response. This is the most critical part. What we do with what we learn about ourselves (H), and our children’s information-sharing (O) given that we now have more knowledge (T). Do we find it balanced and right for the family? Do we cut back on any of the electronic engagements? Do we re-adjust one of our habits?

With that, what are your thoughts? What superhero would you pick for the job?