Skout Flirt Screen
Social Media has been a positive force for youth. It lets them express themselves, helps them overcome social isolation and it gives them the ability to influence the world without the freedom granted by adulthood. There is a darker side to social media as well. The most evident in recent years has been cyber bullying, but it’s not the only issue.
There have been three recent rape allegations connected the service Skout. In response, the company has decided to suspend the teen branch of their service. Teens who are avid users of the service are moving against the shutdown. The teens believe that the shutdown won’t help anything. Teens will simply lie about their age and use the adult service, and they correctly assert that their creeps on Facebook too.
Facebook is choosing to take a different path. They acknowledge the fact that minors will use their site regardless. In fact, 38% of minors using Facebook are under the required age of registration, 13. So Facebook is working to create a version for their site for minors. It is a version that gives them unique privacy setting and controls. You can find more on that, and why people feel Facebook isn’t doing it out of pure altruism here.
Many of those creeps use the same method that they did on Skout on Facebook and other sites. Child Predators who target teens and children using Social Media frequently lie about their age in their profiles, and they use pictures of themselves or others as teens as profile pictures. They don’t just say their teens in a chat room, they build profiles around a teenage identity. They earn the trust of teens. They set up a meeting, and then they commit their crime.
This has happened many times. It has happed across the county. It happened on Long Island where I live in January. It is not that difficult to imagine happening, but it is difficult to dream up an effective solution overnight. The solutions being proposed right now include restricting teen access, creating an automated system the scours the net for child porn and prostitution, and new laws governing access/possible capabilities of social media. The effectiveness of this shotgun will likely save some, but the implementation must be closely watched. There is a fine line between protecting teens and silencing them.
The bottom line is banning teens from Social Media won’t help. Predators, rapists and molesters have and will always exist. Facebook may even help bring them to justice, or it could at very least provide people an avenue for closure. What does help? Have the conversations daily, and whenever possible. They may get sick of hearing it from you, but that is okay. We can’t eliminate pedophelia, as much as we want to. But maybe we can empower teens to protect themselves.
American Libraries recently posted an article about programming for homeschooled kids and their families. There are a lot of great ideas there that you should take a look at, but very few of the ideas are focused on teens. Like any library media specialist knows, teens need to have their reading, research, and library skills in check before college, and those being homeschooled are no different.
In addition to inviting those teens to your regular programming and events, consider doing things for them during the lull of the day, when everyone else is in school. Not all parents who homeschool are necessarily schooled in how to use library databases, scholarly journals, and online media for research projects, so perhaps a small group might appreciate a workshop similar to the ones high school students get from their librarians. You could even designate a special hour a week for drop-in lessons.
On a similar note, homeschools don’t employ full-time college counselors, but you probably have a circulating and non-circulating collection of test prep books, college guides, and more. Another unique daytime program you can offer, then, is a college workshop. Invite some current college students, whose schedules also allow them to have some free hours during the day, to answer questions about local schools and essay topics, and see if any of your regular homework tutors can volunteer to come in and help with the process.
Many homeschooled kids participate in things like Cub Scouts, community theatre, and sports so that they’re not cut off from the greater community. But what about that good ol’ teen stuff that your parents aren’t supposed to facilitate for you? You know…angst, sex, peer pressure, body changes. Consider hosting a daytime talk group, possibly broken into male- and female-only groups, where peer mentoring and bonding can happen outside of the home and away from the parents. This is also a great way to look into partnering with community organizations dedicated to youth development or prevention, or to bring in a volunteer or intern, such as a graduate student in counseling. To broaden horizons even more, make it a drop-in after-school talk, where teens from any school situation can hang out. Write a theme on a whiteboard outside the door, alongside some guidelines for safe spaces, and let them guide the conversation the way they would at lunchtime on the bleachers.
Many homeschooling parents form support or social groups. Look online for groups in your area, and then reach out to them to let them know about the resources you already have. Since they’re apt to take their kids on field trips, remind them about the museum passes you offer. Put them on a mailing list and let them know about new materials in the library relevant to curriculum and enrichment. Send them a schedule of all the events for teens, but highlight those that are designed specifically for homeschoolers. Or reach out and ask the parents and the teens what they’d like to see in their library.
Host an alternative futures event! If local high schools are only doing traditional college fairs, work with representatives from the Peace Corps, Americorps, and other post-graduation, gap year programs. While any teen would enjoy programming such as this, it’s especially relevant to more and more homeschooled teens, who often decide against college or the military post “graduation” in favor of more self-paced, experiential learning like they’re used to. This would be a great way to spark conversation between your homeschooled patrons and their traditional school counterparts–what do they think are the best plans for an 18-year-old? What could they never see themselves doing?
Do you have a strong contingent of homeschooled teens in your community? Do you even know?
Former Republican Congressman, founding trustee of the Heritage Foundation, and national chairman of the American Conservative Union, Mickey Edwards is the author of Reclaiming Conservatism: How A Great American Political Movement Got Lost- and How It Can Find It Way Back. He attended the State of the Union address Monday night and shared his reaction with us yesterday. Today Edwards wonders why the Republican members of Congress were so enthusiastic at the SOTU Monday. Read Edwards other OUPblog posts here.
For Republican members of Congress, the man who delivered a State of the Union speech Monday night was not merely a President of the United States – the head of one of the other branches of the federal government – but, more importantly, he was their team captain. (more…)
Share This
