Bitmoji Parenting

Got your Bitmoji yet?

Your Bitmoji is your own person emoji, your cartoon version of yourself that you can share on Snapchat and in text messages. Like this:

I sent mine to my husband and immediately he wanted one! So now, we’re a Bitmoji family.

And wow, I’ve discovered it’s a great way to parent! Well, to supplement my parenting.

I have a 13 year old at home. He spends a lot of time in his room, listening to his music, playing Fortnite, Snapchatting and Facetiming his friends. I know it’s his age. I’m not too worried. I did the same thing: I spent hours in my room with my door closed, doing my thing, listening to my music, and holding up the only phone line in the house with 3-hour phone calls with my BFF.

It’s as though at 13 they enter a phase where communication with anyone over 16 is impossible, like we speak a different language.

So, I started speaking his.

I sent him a Snapchat from work the other day, saying I’d be home late. Would he start dinner?

 

He responded. Sure his return Snapchat was a picture of his forehead down to his rolling eyes. But he responded! And he started dinner!

As with most teens, their capacity to pick up after themselves is limited. I recall, at around age 15, I had a plate of food in my room that got pushed under my bed…until I found it weeks (?) later. It was almost unrecognizable.

My parents would be on my case constantly about cleaning my room. I rarely listened (as the example above illustrates). I’m guessing that’s where he gets it. So I tried my new parenting tool:

 

And miraculously, when I arrived home from work, he even had the vacuum running!

 

If you’re a parent of a teen, you likely feel like like all you say is,

Clean up after yourself. Put that away. Move your shoes. Hang up your coat. No, you can’t have friends over. Do your homework. No phones at the dinner table. Turn down that racket. No more video games. Don’t come home late. Why did you come home so late???

Sometimes – more often than not – I feel like I sound like a broken record. He doesn’t even know what that saying means. There is no 2018 equivalent. I sound like a song that won’t download? No, that doesn’t work.

There are times when only my in-person threats and loud voice will get my point across, but….there are Bitmojis!

Of course I wouldn’t really taser him! But this Bitmoji paired with a “You Better…” message actually gets my point across.

When my kids were young – really young – we’d have Yes Days.  Yes Days were when they could ask me anything (within reason) and I would say, YES! I started the Yes Days because I was so tired of No, of saying don’t do this, don’t do that, you can’t, you shouldn’t, no, no, no.

Yes Days were fun. Can we go to the park? YES!, Can we get popsicles? YES!, Can we watch another movie? YES!

My Bitmoji parenting is my equivalent to Yes Days.

So far they’re working.

 

Facebook for the U13 market? It’s a business decision, 100%.

Up until 4 days ago, you had to be 13 years old to get a Facebook account, and an Instagram account, and Snapchat.

But on Monday, Facebook launched Messenger Kids, an app that “lets the world’s biggest social media company expand into…an untapped market….”.

So who’s winning here?

Facebook says, “There’s really a gap in the market for a messaging app for kids that also gives parents control.”, and that in working with a series of online security and child development specialists, and 1,200 parents, they’re giving kids access to social media platforms that require parental controls.

They report that research shows young children were already using technology on a regular basis anyway…..so….really, they’re doing us a favour.

They’re also winning brand loyalty. Early. Facebook knows, I’m sure more than anyone, that their demographic has shifted. They once had a captive audience in young teens, but now those young teens have moved on to Instagram (including Instagram stories – incidentally, Facebook owns Instagram) and Snapchat.

I don’t believe for a second that they’re doing this for the good of children under 13 everywhere, and for their parents so that said parents can sleep well at night knowing they have total control of their children’s online presence. This is a business decision, 100%.

Research out of the U.S. from this past spring shows that 76% of teens (aged 13-17) use Instagram. 75% use Snapchat. 66% use Facebook; that percentage has remained flat since 2015.

Facebook knows this. They are afraid, very afraid. I imagine a bunch of Facebook execs sat around a table, and said, how can we win back the young teen market?

Developing an app that targets under 13 is how.

But – big, big BUT here – how do we as parents use this to our advantage? Because, let’s be honest, social platforms are here to stay.

I truly believe the research that shows children are already using this technology. They are our children, and we have Facebook accounts. I have a video of my son at age 6 that I uploaded to Facebook, where he asks me in the video, “Are you putting that on Facebook?”.

If they aren’t using their own accounts, they’re definitely a part of ours. They’re part of their older sister’s posts, their cousin’s, their babysitter’s Snapchat stories.

We, as their parents, post their school pictures, their birthdays celebrations, we share photos of their basketball tournament wins. Your friends comment on them, in turn, sharing your photos of your kids with your friends’ friends. This is how Facebook works.

Facebook and other social platforms will always be adjusting and shifting and evolving because they’re a business, and a business has to constantly readjust to be successful.

When my son, at age 11, asked if he could get an Instagram account, my daughter said, “Mom, you let me get Facebook when I was his age, but Facebook isn’t cool any more.”

There it is. The problem. The kids are saying, “Facebook isn’t cool any more”. Facebook knows that. And this is how they’re going to fix it. After all, it is a business decision.

 

Rape violence in our city

This hit my Facebook feed last night:

Alleged gang rapes occurring at local parties. Apparently, senior boys are luring junior girls to parties, drugging them, gang-raping them, and then ‘branding’ them by drawing a symbol somewhere on their body.

My children do not attend John F Ross CVI but they know about this, it has been populating their social media feeds and been a topic of discussion for a couple of weeks now.

This problem is all of ours. It does not matter if your children attend this school or not – I am sure they have heard about it – this is our problem. This can and will impact your children, your daughters, your sons, their friends.

This is not solely an issue of safe partying and taking care of each other, this is an issue of rape violence.

This certainly is not an issue of making sure our girls are safe, finding out how much they drank, what they wore, what they said, what they Snapchatted. This is an issue of making sure they take care of each other, know they are supported, and know we are listening and will help them.

This is not just an issue of ‘boys will be boys’ , this is an issue where we must ensure our boys respect women, respect themselves, take a stand for what is right and speak out against rape violence.

This is not just an issue of allegations, this is your cue to talk to your children, educate your sons and support your daughters.

Maybe you think this isn’t your issue because your children do not attend this high school. You couldn’t be more wrong, because the issue of rape violence doesn’t just belong to the few.

5 tips for my daughter as she heads off to university

That day has arrived. My daughter is moving out of our house and moving into residence. [sniff, sniff]

She will be surrounded by a small family of 400 students in her residence, living in harmony, figuring out life on her own.

Now is the time when I reflect, reflect on all the things I’ve taught her, and question myself over and over again if what I told her was right. Or even helpful.

Here are 5 tips my mother gave me when I moved out and how they translate in 2017:

1. “Always carry money for a pay phone.” OK, do pay phones even exist any more? Bings (my nickname for her), always make sure your phone is charged when you leave home.
2. “Don’t talk to strangers.” Now this is kinda ridiculous today, with the interwebs and all.  Every time she tweets or posts to Instagram, she’s talking to strangers. Girl, you know what I’ve taught you: make sure that every time you tweet, post to Instagram, or update your Snapchat story you remember that you are talking to strangers. Post accordingly.
3. “Nothing will work unless you do.” (quote: Maya Angelou) Balance your time. Know that tonight’s Snapchat stories will still be there tomorrow morning. DO YOUR HOMEWORK!
4. “Shake someone’s hand with a firm grip, look them in the eye, and say, ‘Nice to meet you.”. Still incredibly valid today! When e-introducing yourself to professors, classmates, (through email, online forums, text messages) be confident and polite, and use correct spelling and punctuation.
5. “Call me if you need anything!!” Snapchat or text me if you need anything!!”

Go have fun! Live your life! I’ll see you on Instagram! Love mom xoxo

 

Get on board the Snapchat train

My 12 year old came down to breakfast yesterday and cried, “this is so great! Snapchat isn’t blocked at school any more.  That means more daytime stories!”.

He spends his school days with his friends. Yet, being allowed to Snap about their lives while they’re spending time together is what he considers a social accomplishment and necessity.

I rolled my eyes and thought to myself, I don’t get it.

But I need to get it.

Snapchat is king. All the butterflies, and rainbow vomit, and snowy background filters aside, it has taken over Twitter. Snapchat rose to success while we weren’t looking, while we figured it was just a silly kid thing that we didn’t need to know about.

Its goal is to become this generation’s equivalent to television.  And a couple of weeks ago, Snapchat filed documents for an upcoming stock offering that would value the firm at $30 billion – that makes it one of the largest public offerings we’ve seen in a while.

That’s huge.  A multi-billion dollar company has power. It is no longer the childish app that has nothing to do with us.  It has everything to do with us. As parents, knowing where your child hangs out – whether it’s at the mall or on an online messaging app – is your responsibility.

To figure out how to snap is unintuituve, I know. (I realize unintuitive is not a word, but I’m making it a word.) It’s like some under 20-something person sat down and said, hmmmm how can I make an app that is so abstract and obtuse that the average parent will not understand how to add it to their phone, let alone use it, and therefore, it will grow into the largest social network for non-parents?

I’m pretty sure that happened.

My daughter will Snap me while I’m at work to show me what she’s doing at school, or to tell me she’s going to be late. For the amount of time it takes me to figure out how to respond to her I could have texted her 30+ messages. And so I text her and say, Why can’t you just text me??

I feel like how my mom felt when we got our first VCR in the early 80’s, and she cried, How do you work this stupid thing??

Thankfully, ConnectSafely, an organization dedicated to educating users about technology (and safety and privacy and security), created, A Parent’s Guide to Snapchat.

Oh yes they did. It’s a beautiful thing.

I read a piece the other day that said, what you see on Snapchat is real. People aren’t fishing for likes or follows or reshares…they’re trying to be real. And being real and sharing is what our kids do on Snapchat. They share what they’re doing because they want their friends to see, because they just want to share.

My colleague said to me today, Snapchat is the trailer for our lives.

We live in a sharing society, a society made up of our tech-savvy tweens and teens. You can tell them not to share, but they will anyway. So learn how they’re sharing; add Snapchat to your phone, fool around with it, sit with your kids and echo your mother’s cries from years ago and say, How do you work this stupid thing?, and figure it out. Just figure it out. Teach them how to share responsibly and teach them the risks in sharing.

Accept the fact that they will share. Their responsibility is to share wisely, your responsibility is to teach them how to do so.

 

 

 

The rules of social are about sharing

I have it all figured out.

Twitter has 140 character limit. OK, I can do that.
Instagram is for photo sharing. Right, got it.
Snapchat is messaging with images and multi-media, and it’s ephemeral. Gotcha.

Wrong.
Wrong.
Wrong.

Wait, what?

Everything I knew about social has now changed. And no, I don’t have it figured out.

Twitter is encouraging us to express ourselves in more than 140 characters.

Instagram is having an identity crisis. They launched ‘stories‘ in August. Stories are Snapchat’s thing. Were Snapchat’s thing.  And like Snapchat’s stories, they disappear after 24 hours.

Snapchat was all about the disappearing act. Now, with Snapchat’s ‘memories‘ you can save all your snaps and all your stories.

Got it?

It will change. Change will be dictated by the user and the platforms’ response to what the user wants.

Twitter was struggling to keep up with the dominant Instagram and Snapchat, so by expanding their abilities, they’re catering to the users’ need to share.

Instagram saw the success and lure of Snapchat’s stories, so, voila, Instagram has stories. Sharing x 2, Insta style.

Snapchat users love sharing snaps and stories, but how many times have I heard a Snapchat user say, “oh snap! I meant to save that!”. Enter Memories. Problem solved.

I give it six months before we see more changes.  And the changes will be brought on by the users’ experiences and/or demands.

Those experiences and demands are all about sharing: how we share, what we share, how often we share, and with whom we share it.

 

Is social currency exhausting?

Twitter, oh the things I learn on Twitter.

I learn that many think it’s time higher education embrace Snapchat, I learn how to make beautiful images for social media, and I learn that my daughter, who’s in grade 11, wonders if there’ll ever be a day when she is not tired.

Girl, you have no idea. This is only the beginning. You will be tired for the rest of your life. This tiredness you feel, right now, is nothing compared to the tired that will settle upon your weary self in the coming years.

Grade 11 is hard. Two H’s fill your life: homework and hormones – they battle for your waning energy resources.

Grade 12 will be a new tired as you face the 3 Hs: homework, hormones, and higher education choices. The struggle will be real, more real than you think the struggle is today.

Then you’ll be a university student. You won’t remember how to spell the word, tired. Four years of uninterrupted papers, mid-terms, and finals. The demands placed upon you will be many.

You’ll think back to those high school days when you had a spare in first period, when you could sleep in on weekends, when your mom still scheduled your dentist appointments.

Then you’ll graduate with a degree and you’ll get yourself a job. Hopefully. And you’ll think back to that day in grade 11 when you told your mom, I don’t wanna spend my whole summer working. And you’ll wonder what that even meant! Imagine, not working a 40-hour week!

As an employed individual, you’ll think back to your university days, those lazy days when you had soooo much time, because as long as you got your papers in on time, and passed your exams, your life was your own. Your parents helped pay for you to live in your own place, they even helped buy groceries. Your responsibilities were to pass. Full stop.

Then you might get married.  The first little while will be idyllic – there will be two of you, two of you contributing to your subsistence, two of you to get sh*t done. And it will be so lovely, you’ll think, we should have a baby.

You never knew a tired like this tired.

Your nights will fuse into days, you won’t know if it’s 3am or 3pm.

And one day you’ll wake up and wonder where the time went.  The thing is, you’ll wake up at 2:30am – the action of your daughter sneaking into the house past her curfew woke you.

Enter new tired.

And the cycle continues.

Twenty One Pilots says it like it is:

“wish we could turn back time to the good ole’ days when our momma sang us to sleep, but now we’re stressed out.”

Here’s my point. I do have one. This isn’t just about proving to my daughter that she has no idea what level of tired she’ll reach. Being a teenager in 2016 is tough, way tougher than it was in 1986.

On top of everything we dealt with, they have the additional stress of social currency.

social currency (sōSHəl kərənsē) n.  a common term that can be understood as the entirety of actual and potential resources which arise from the presence in social networks and communities.

In other words, the number of likes, retweets, shares, reblogs, and comments on social media represent your currency, your social currency. The more you have the ‘richer’ you are.

The pressure to look amazing, do amazing things, go amazing places, eat amazing food, buy amazing shoes, and know amazing people – and document it – is omnipresent. The pressure is in their every day life. It exists in the number of likes they get on their Instagram post, the number of retweets they glean, the number of people who viewed their Snapchat story, and the number of group chats they’re in.

So yeah, it’s exhausting. Imagine the pressure to be amazing 100% of the time?

I’m an advocate of our kids on social media. Maybe they share things you wouldn’t share. But knowing what they share can only help you help them; help them navigate their way through this labyrinth they call grade 11.

Add another H to their grade 11 soup: homework, hormones, and help.

 

It’s a world of likes, 6 second videos, and vomiting rainbows

They say reddit is the front page of the internet.  If there is a front page, my kids know where it is. And on that front page, you’ll find whatever is happening now. Not now as in today, but now as in now, this very second.

They are hyper-connected.

7:00am:

Kid A wakes up. His alarm is Drake’s Jumpman. The music is coming from his phone…his phone, that is charging directly beside his bed. He starts a string in his Group Chat.

Kid B gets up late. She’s probably been awake for a while but has been scrolling through Instagram, checking Snapchat to see what she’s missed, and responding to the numerous texts in her Group Chats.

Breakfast consists of whatever they can make that only requires one hand and part concentration. The other hand and the other part of their concentration is entirely devoted to their life, the life in their phone. But their life. Full stop.

The drive to school is a combination of the latest Vine, opening a vomiting rainbow Snapchat from their friend and sending one back with an edit that distorts their face.

Kid A says, Mom, according to Snapchat you’re going over the speed limit.  Ah yes, Snapchat has a geo-location filter that tracks my movement, and tells my son that I am travelling 56km/hr, not the legislated 50km/hr.

Kid B cries, Ack! I totally forgot! I have to take $25 in for Student Council today. She knows this because the alert she set on her phone yesterday has just reminded her.  Tech-win.

Bluetooth picks up Alt-J on her phone, and voila! Breezeblocks fills the speakers.

They communicate with each other with a string of phrases that make no sense to me. They’re quotes from the latest trending Vine, or from a new YouTube series they’ve been watching.

They get to school and I know this e-communication continues, well, as much as the school’s WiFi can allow.

A recent conversation with the Superintendent of our school board was enlightening.  Last year, he said, they were easily exceeding their bandwidth, daily. So they doubled it. As of December, 2015, they were at 90% capacity of their doubled bandwidth.

The solution? Block the most popular apps, the ones sucking the bandwidth life out of the school: Snapchat, Instagram, Google Play, Apple Music, and Netflix. You can imagine the uproar!

The school has WiFi but it needs to support the curriculum’s need to access the Cloud, and YouTube, at times.

Remember when you were in high school (ladies, you might associate with this more), and you’d rush home after school where you just spent the entire day with your friends, to pick up the phone and call them to talk about what you just spent the entire day living and talking about?

My mom did not understand it. “You just spent the whole day with your friends! What could you possibly have to talk about??”

She so did not get it.

Fast forward to 2016. The same thing is happening. They aren’t picking up the phone to manually dial a minimum of seven numbers (we all hated when friends had 8s, 9s, and 0s in their number!), they’re sending images, video, some are accompanied with text, some have sound, some update the masses, some are just for an exclusive group.

Their friends, their conversations, their life is in the palm of their hand. It’s where they hang out.

And I hang out there too.  I follow both of my kids on Snapchat, Twitter and Instagram. It’s the equivalent of my parents driving down the streets of my home town just to see what I was doing, who I was hanging out with.

While I’m not part of the Group  Chats, and I can’t guarantee that what they’re talking about is appropriate, I have to think back to 1985 when I raced home to stretch the phone cord up the stairs, and around the corner, to whisper into the phone and talk about what my mom would’ve considered inappropriate.

Dinner time comes and the rule is, no phones. That’s the one time we’re all unconnected. We say grace, we share a meal and we share our day.  And ultimately, one of those conversations has to do with a recent post, a conversation that happened in the Group Chat, and how “it was soooo funny, mom!”.

MediaSmarts, Canada’s Centre for Digital and Media Literacy, reported in 2013 that over half of grade 11s sleep with their phones.  That was in 2013.  I didn’t even sleep with my phone in 2013.  But I do now.

This is a different life to what I grew up in.  Resisting and denying my kids access to their phones – their life – is futile.  So I embrace it.

My daughter sends me celebrations on Snapchat:

And I send her my response, complete with freaky filter (note my eyes and lips!):

This is it, people. The Future. It’ll become even more unwieldy as the months go by too, as technology and communication techniques continue to shift and evolve.

Turn away and pretend you don’t see it, but it isn’t going anywhere. Open those arms of yours – I know you’ll have a phone in one hand! – and embrace it.  Embrace the whole dang thing: Snapchat, Twitter, Instagram, Vine, and whatever else comes your way.

 

 

Minimum Age for Social Media

There’s a minimum age kids must be if they want to join any social network. It’s 13. Want to get Instagram? You’ve gotta be 13. Want to add Snapchat? You’ve gotta be 13.

Yet I’m speaking at an elementary school tonight about social media. Elementary school goes up to about grade 6 or grade 8 (depending on the school). That means the majority of kids in that school are under 13.

So why, if it’s ‘illegal’, am I speaking to them and their parents?

Because unlike voting, purchasing alcohol, and driving, this ‘law’ isn’t a law. It’s a rule. Sort of.

Regardless of this rule, kids as young as 9 years old (or younger) are on Instagram and Snapchat.

What’s more important to me is ensuring that parents understand where their kids are hanging out. When we were young, it was irresponsible of our parents to allow us to go out with an unknown group of friends to an unknown location doing unknown things.

Same things applies: where are your kids hanging out? who’s there? and what are they doing?

If you teach yourself how to use Instagram, then you can teach your kids about safety. They’ll likely be able to teach you about filters, and search functions – just like when I had to teach my mom how to use the FF button on the wired VCR remote, but she taught me what movies were appropriate for me to watch.

You can tell your 11 year old that they aren’t old enough to get Instagram, but I bet they’re going to get it anyway. They just won’t tell you. Or their friends will be on it, and by association so will they.

I guess I’m a criminal because both of my kids were 10 or 11 when they joined. But I educated myself. I know how to add a story to Snapchat, I know how to post a photo on Instagram. And I know how to creep both of my kids on both.

My 11 year old said, “mom, I think you let me be on Instagram because you know so much about it.” Yep, pretty much.

So tonight, while speaking to an elementary school, I’ll tell them about the 13-rule, but I’ll spend much more time telling them about how to teach their kids how to be in control of their digital identity.

And maybe I’ll lead a Snapchat 101 session, and teach the parents how to use the fastest growing social messaging app.

When a piece of gum gave me social media advice

Social media is about sharing. We post where we went on vacation, what we did over the weekend, how we’re dealing with the snow. We celebrate victories and look for support when we post our defeats.

I’m a big sharer of relevant and irrelevant stuff.  I post pictures of my dog, and pictures of my shoes. Whatever excites me at the time.

I send snapchats to my daughter when I’m drinking her favourite smoothie. And I tweet in support of organizations in which I am a part of.

We share with our followers.  If we didn’t have followers then what’s the point of sharing? It would be like posting a picture of your dog and saying, dude, look at my dog:

But if no one is following you then no one is there to see it.  It’s like standing in the middle of a field alone saying, dude, look at my dog.

The past few months I’ve spoken with several student groups, both at the high school and university level, about being in control of their digital identity.

We talk about the power of sharing information, and we talk about the need to take control over what we share.

We review real life examples of when posts, tweets, text messages, and snaps have gone bad. We dissect it, figure out why it happened, and talk about how to avoid it in their own digital lives.  (We also talk about how bad behaviour is bad behaviour whether it’s IRL or online – but that’s another presentation.)

Every time I talk to them, I meet students who had “no idea“, didn’t know “everyone could see my stuff“, “never thought of it that way“. And every time, I come away surprised at how little they know about such a powerful communications tool…

…until today when I opened up a piece of gum. I don’t usually pay attention to the wrapper, but for some reason something on this one caught my eye:

Pay particular attention to the middle call to action:

“Truth: What’s the biggest risk you’ve ever taken? Tweet it on Twitter.”

The gum package has branded itself as interactive and encourages its chewers of gum to “DARE TO SHARE”.  Every piece of gum has three different Truth or Dare commands. And it’s targeting teens and young adults.  With dares such as,

“Truth: fill in the blank: If I dared to skip class, I’ll go with….”,

“Dare: Show something you’d never share” (wait, what??),

and of course, ones like the one above.

If things as seemingly benign as a gum wrapper are telling them to do stupid things, it’s no wonder we’re encountering stupidity online.

And that is why it’s even more important to educate our children, our students, and ourselves about what and how we share, and with whom we share it.

Let me end with a picture of candy cigarettes – remember those? – to remind us of when life was simpler.