Kids have a natural relationship with technology that my generation doesn't have.
It's like they were born with a third arm while we had a prosthetic one attached at some point in our early teens. It takes some getting used to, but for them, it's second nature.
Case in point:
It's Halloween and we, along with hundreds of other people are walking on Grand Ave.
My daughter comes across some friends. She starts introducing her friend to a group of other friends...when she got to the last person she said...'Oh...and this is...wait...I know you from Instagram right?!"
"Yah, yah he says as he proceeds to check my daughter out...they hug...they all keep chatting...they all hug goodbye. All is well in teen world.
But mom is like....."What?" "So you talk to him online but you don't know him?"
"Yah." she answers, dismisses my confusion and we go on with Trick or Treating.
And that was when it hit me. For my daughter meeting teens online is totally normal. Instagram, KIK, Tumblr...whatever the arena...they "know" each other. They're "cool" with each other already.
I compare this to dating sites, where every person you meet has the potential of duct taping you to a chair in his basement. Yes, I really do think of scary things like that.
The hardest thing to get past, after the initial embarrassment of going on a dating site and worrying about what you friends will say, is meeting people you haven't met before and not feeling scared. Letting your intuition do the work and trusting that you have sharpened that intuitive saw over the many years of meeting people in other situations, is not as easy as it sounds.
So what's the difference really?
Is it that teens aren't jaded yet, is it that their admirable-yet-scary-to-a-mom sense of reckless abandonment and underdevelopment brains make them more trusting and open. Yes, yes and yes....I believe that's it exactly.
So you're probably wondering...what did I do, in light of this discovery, when it came to my daughter. Well, I gave her the room to do the right thing. To trust the world and her young new I-have-met-you-in-person friend. He was real and he wasn't pretending to be anybody else. No "catfish" allowed. I trusted that her Digital Citizenship class, multiple Internet Safety conversations and all of the heart to hearts we have had will help her adjust to a brave new world...well bravely, but with nosey mom looking on from over here on the side, behind that tree.
