Kids and Blogs and Privacy

I think it's important that bloggers consider privacy issues - especially us mothers who blog about our children. These kids have personal information about them put online which they did not get a chance to edit or even vet for honesty. How should they react if the website is then thrown back at them. What should they do if  - heaven forbid - their friends find their website?

I recently read a comment that this was an unlikely occurrence. Maybe it's still pretty rare that a kid gets outed by his mother's blog but I suspect it's simply a matter of time before it becomes more common. And I think it bears thinking about now, not later.

I started a blog in 1994. It wasn't called a blog then, of course, there was no organized software. It was my journal, typed up and added to my website. I updated about once a week, writing about how it felt to be alone with this newborn baby boy.

The emotions I was going through were so overwhelming and it seemed to me that the baby magazines were not talking about what was happening to me. They said that  babies were always wonderfully cute and slept through the night if you read the right books and mothers never ever felt upset or frustrated. That wasn't how I felt. I was seriously wondering about this thing of selling your baby to the gypsies - could I get in on that?

So I wrote this record of the joy and frustration and anger and devotion I felt and I put it online. It only lasted about three months but I left it on my website and people mailed me to say thank you for being so honest and that I helped them feel like they weren't alone.

So that was good.

In the decade that followed, the online world changed dramatically. The amount of websites surged and technology rushed to keep up. Search engines sprang up and became more and more refined and google became a verb.  Instead of word of mouth, people found websites by looking for a collection of key words.

And a bunch of eleven-year-old boys sitting at the computer lab at school came up with a game of googling each others names to see what came up. Although I'd never used Alex's first and last name, the linking page had my full name. That was enough: technology had marched on and my old diaries jumped up as a match.

The boys laughed and mocked. Alex blew up. A teacher got involved and tried to work out what to do. The school phoned me, confused as to what the boys had found (I'm sure this will not be such a mystery in the near future) and asking me what they should do.

I didn't have an answer but the IT person did - he got out the nanny software and added my website to the list of blocked domains.

I was censored.

It felt odd but my son's relief was impossible to deny and I didn't have any better solution.

What I want to make clear here is: the technology the kids used to find the blog wasn't available when I wrote it.

In the same way, children of the future may be searching on each others photographs, matching based on facial features in a way we can't conceive of now. Perhaps you'll see google searches matching based on the IP address from which the blog files were uploaded.

It's not that I was foolish enough to use his real name, it's that I couldn't second guess how things were going to move on.

I still can't.

I understand that now. I have had to accept that anything I write is not truly anonymous, whatever precautions I might take. I think writing under my own name helps a lot with that - the temptation to write things that possibly shouldn't see the light of day is a lot less when you know that you are not anonymous, rather than simply hoping that you might be.

Now because my son is fourteen years rather than fourteen days old, I wanted his input before I went back to blogging about being a mother.

I showed him a few mommy blogs and the comments and the interesting angles resulting from adults talking to each other about problems with parenting. We spoke about the lack of intelligent discourse online between parents and teenagers and that communication could only be a good thing.  I admitted that there were some fairly depressing blogs, where parents seemed to be writing about their children as Problems rather than people.

And then I told him that I was considering blogging about being the mother of a teenage boy.

He didn't blink. "And I guess you are considering what style you should write in, whether you should write like those depressing women or not?"

Great faith my son has in me, huh? Well, no, I said. I wanted to talk about problems and pitfalls but I also wanted to write in such away that people saw him as a person.

"I think you should do it," he said without hesitation.

"Don't you want to think about it? It's a major invasion of your privacy."

He gave me a look. And that look said something like: I am a 14-year-old boy with a domineering mother who insists on knowing exactly what is on my PC and has access to my email. I go to a boarding school where I share a room with five other boys and the staff have access to all my stuff at all times. And you want to talk to me about privacy?

But what he said was, "I don't think it's a big deal."

OK, yeah, good point. It sucks to be you. I guess a few essays on the Internet aren't going to make a big difference.

I reminded him about the boys who googled on his name and we agreed that I'd use his middle name so that his classmates wouldn't find it this year.

But after that, he said, he wasn't that bothered. In fact, he'd read my baby journals a few times once he got over the initial shock. And he admitted that he really liked hearing me talk about him when he was tiny.

Even the bit about selling him to the gypsies.

Maybe I won't sell him just yet.

Comments

[HeatherErin]

This is the very reason I refer to my children as Eldest, Son, and Youngest. Every once in a while I slip and use a real name, which I remove as quickly as I find it.

However, sooner or later, one of them will find it. Or worse yet, Husband will find it, I mean, admit that he reads it despite my warning him off in a post.

I'm not sure quite how to handle it, other than to acknowledge that if I did not have this pressure valve, none of them would LIVE long enough to read it!

[amyz5]

i love this topic as I am always amazed at the level of intimate family details people put out there. I have spent years trying to get my kids to value privacy. I think their gen just doesn't care the way we did. Although my blogging is transparent, I never post anything about them that they do not approve and feel comfortable with. And certainly nothing that is personal. this will be interesting time to study the psychology of social media for sure.

[Daisy]

When I started my blog, I decided to follow the trend of nicknames and no full-face pictures. Even though my kids are 16 and 21, I rarely post something recognizable, and even then their names are not on it. Husband, however, reads me regularly and wants a better name!

[Ilona]

There are things I'd love to write about here, but I just can't, and it's frustrating. There are not many people with whom you can discuss certain things. But I remind myself: posting something on the internet is equivalent to printing your secret on bits of paper and tossing them out the window on a windy day. You just never know where and when it could come to light.

It's still frustrating, though.

[kidsrtc]

Great subject, my oldest is 21, my yougest 14 and one in the middle is 16. I started my blog this year to share our journey with my middle son and to the best of my ability I have tried to keep my identity anonymous. I felt it was important from the get go, first so that I could be open and honest, second to protect all my sons identity. My goal is to help families that have troubled teens and are trying to navigate the scary waters and find support. Having a troubled teen can be filled with shame and guilt, not something that you share over tea with the PTA. The internet, blogging, social networking can be a healthy forum to bring families together and find support. I never use any of my family members names or pictures.