Will your child change his/her name someday? Do you know what they are posting online? Google CEO Eric Schmidt is predicting that in the future, people will be allowed to change their names upon entering adulthood in order to hide a childhood full of online social indiscretions. Says Schmidt, “I don’t believe society understands what happens when everything is available, knowable and recorded by everyone all the time.”
It never hurts to pop in and check on your children’s online accounts and see what they are posting. Facebook is a prime site for stalkers. Pictures and personal information that get posted can provide predators with additional information about your child and family. Have you talked to your children about not “friending” people they don’t personally know? They should never invite people they don’t know to have a look at their personal life, and even among those they do know, they should exercise great caution about what they post online.
Schmidt also left us with a statement eerily reminiscent of Orwell’s novel “1984.” After stating that people want Google to play a bigger role in their lives and “tell them what they should be doing next,” he said, “we know roughly who you are, roughly what you care about, roughly who your friends are.” They also pretty much know where you live and if you’ve got an Android cell phone, probably where you are right now. With the internet and the amount of information that is stored online, we are all losing our privacy. It may be a good time for you to take a few minutes and teach your children about keeping as much of their privacy as they can. They may not have it for long, and a bad online decision can haunt them the rest of their lives…unless a name change is in their future…
