Why Parents Should Keep Their Tweets Strictly Business
Being careful what you tweet is more important than ever before.
We all know that the internet can be a very dangerous place for kids and most of us provide limits on what our young children can and cannot do while online. We teach them about never giving out their real name or the name of their school, but how many moms release specific factual information about their kids, family and home on Twitter?
If you’re like most, you can probably think of at least one friend who tweets her whereabouts each day, or talks about her schedule identifying where she will be that day. Some even announce when they are leaving on vacation…and where they are going!
Without moms realizing it, when they tweet this type of personal information, they are setting themselves and their kids up for danger.
No only will predators have access to your information, but so will online thieves,
It goes without saying how dangerous mindless or spur of the moment tweets can be in the cases of divorce, custody and domestic abuse.
The Huffington Post lists 12 things you should never tweet about and while most of the information is obvious, like don’t tweet about office gossip, risky behavior (think insurance companies) and racy photos, some of these very actions have landed people in jail, without a job, and with no insurance. Some of the don’ts that parents find themselves doing include the following:
Kids names and daily routines
Most moms are careful about not naming their children online but a whole lot aren’t. Even if they identify their school mascot, a quick Google search can return the specific school, the address, and a map. A predator only needs to find a name on a photo or in a comment under the photo to be able to identify a child. Parents should leave all kids’ names out of their Twitter feeds, and never tweet about where the children get picked up or dropped off each day.
Geolocations
I noticed on my Facebook feed that some of my friends’ current locations were showing up throughout the day, as in “Sally checked in to Joe Schmoe’s bar” and I found that really peculiar. Why would someone advertise they were checking into a bar?
Worse than that, after a few days, without even trying I had grown accustomed to this friend’s work schedule and after hours activity simply because it popped up on my newsfeed daily.
Then I read about how easily that can happen:
Some smartphones automatically embed geolocation data into your photos, and you may not realize how much private data you’re revealing with a simple snapshot. According to PrivacyRights.org, “Your real-time location may indicate your home and work addresses, your commuting patterns, what religious institution you visit, how often you go to a doctor, political rallies you attend or whether you are seeking the advice of a lawyer.”
Facebook and Twitter were perhaps meant to be a social experience but they have also evolved into necessities for work. For those compelled to constant tweeting, there is a way to protect your tweets so that only approved Twitter followers can see them, but if you utilize these social networks for work, you will probably have many people on your follower list. Odds are you don’t personally know many of them. The best bet is to make a personal account and another account solely for work.
So while we might love to share our family news with close friends and family, the best way is probably the old fashioned way, pick up a phone and call them. Save the social networks for just that — networking.
Image: Stockxchng
Has a kid ever – I mean literally ever – been kidnapped because his/her mom tweeted his/her school mascot?
No, wait, I’m kind of upset now and will go further. Are there any cases at all of a predator becoming aware of a child’s existence via the Internet (seeing a photo, seeing a tweet, learning their name, whatever) and then going on to harm that child? I know there are cases of predators *contacting* children old enough to use the Internet, but are there any cases at all where simply mentioning a child on a social networking site, blog, twitter feed or whatever led to that child being harmed?
@Diera, I agree. Fear. Monger.
News is a case where something happened. This is not news.
Agreed.
Fear mongering.
Non-issue.
I see others have got here before me. This article also annoyed me. You are raising a theoretical danger – without any justification for how often it actually happens (FOX News anyone?). Really not cool.
I can’t help but feel that the use of geolocations detailing your every move is certainly not safe. It’s a no brainer, and the use of geolocations couldn’t be anymore newsy.
@Danielle: But the hook for this article was the responsibilities of *parents*, that *children* are being put at risk by parents tweeting the wrong information. I’m sure geolocations have been used to stalk someone somewhere, but I kind of doubt it was a child. Again, can you produce even one case of a parent’s location tweets being used to harm a child?
http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/
I can’t even believe this is a serious article. Are you kidding me? Oh man. I’m practically illiterate right now with the red haze I’m seeing, but the other comments have said what I would have wanted to say.
Wow, I’m surprised this post got such a reaction (and quite frankly shocked it caused anger). I was intrigued by the geolocation system which I had not heard of before and also how widely used it is becoming, even without users knowing it all the time. Unfortunately, there have actually been tweets that were linked to home invasions and burglaries so yes, they can produce harm to a child. I don’t see why any parent would feel the need to tweet their whereabouts and personal information. Parenting is largely about awareness and making informed decisions. The goal of this post was to bring awareness.
@Danielle: What tweet was linked to a home invasion? I’m having trouble finding any reference to it in Google.
@Diera They’re out there…just plug in the key words. Here’s a quick link on a robbery resulting from a Facebook status: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/25/earlyshow/main6331796.shtml
@Danielle: That was a burglary, not a violent crime. It didn’t pose a danger to any children, or adults for that matter, it involved the couple’s own childhood friend, and it was based on a vacation tweet, not geolocations. It was not a home invasion. You said there have been home invasions linked to twitter, so you must know of one?
@Diera Yes, I do know of one, someone I know personally, which is why I’m not going to divulge the facts. But there are other crimes, and yes, I do consider burglary to be a crime that would hurt a family and kids in some way, whether it was violent or not. Can you really say a burglary wouldn’t pose danger to kids? The time between when a criminal enters your home and when you or your kids come back home can a matters of minutes. As I stated in the post, tweets about vacations are also not wise. But this is common sense, isn’t it? Like I said there are others, just look them up. In any case, it surely must have struck a nerve…..
@Danielle: Sure it strikes a nerve. It strikes the nerve of wanting the constant BE AFRAID BE VERY AFRAID to stop. As it happens, I don’t even have an active twitter account, so it’s not striking any kind of personal nerve about tweeting my location (it sounds really boring to read). It is a long, long way from “letting people know about your vacation may cause your house to be robbed” to “tweet about your kids and they will be tracked and abducted by child predators”. There is simply no evidence that the latter is any kind of credible concern, and if there isn’t, there’s no reason to scare people about it.
@Diera I have actually never written “tweet about your kids and they will be tracked and abducted by child predators”. I said moms who post this information “are setting themselves and their kids up for danger” i.e burglary, identity theft, robbery, etc…. The whole idea of exchanging information is to share opinions. Either you are agree or disagree…I’m fairly certain that no one was scared by this post.