Stranger Danger!

In Danah Boyd's book, she argues that there is a paranoia about children getting abducted and assaulted due to the information that they post on social media sites. I feel that parents these days are more concerned with child safety than they were in the past. My mom always tells me how her and friends growing up just went outside and explored the town without her parents worrying too much about her even though she did live in Chicago. When I was growing up from a young age my parents talked to me about stranger danger. My mom would not let me go anywhere by myself when I was young so that I was always safe from strangers.

In the current age, I feel that parents are even more concerned about stranger danger both online and in real life. I know of many parents that check the history of what children are doing online as well as their social media sites. Personally, I feel that parents naturally want to keep their children safe, but in many cases this causes children to rebel. I know of several people that grew very angry at their parents when they know that they constantly checked their social media because they feel that they had no privacy. As Boyd discussed, children often go to great lengths to stay private from parents and teachers such as setting up different social media accounts. 

I think that instead of parents constantly checking social network sites and not allowing them to experience life for themselves we need to educate parents and children how to interact safely online. Parents need to know that as long as their child is not posting details about where they live and how to find them, social network sites are not as scary and dangerous as they are perceived to be. During my student teaching of fifth graders, the police department came in to discuss the importance of online safety by showing an internet predator video and talking about how this could have been prevented. As long as schools implement online safety lessons and parents are taught as well, I think this will ease some of the concern for online safety.