In today's Cynopsis Kids we learned that:

In an effort to combat the rise of "sexting" and other digitally lascivious trends, AT&T, iKeepSafe, and the American School Counselor Association launched "Project Pro", a suite of interactive resources to help educate teens and parents about the potential consequences of sullying their online reputations. The resources, stressing the importance of privacy and online reputation, will be distributed to over 2,000 school counselors at the conference and will reach over 25,000 school counselors nationwide.

The wording "digitally lascivious trends" aside, having spoken to thousands of parents (and many teens as well) over the past couple of years about these issues as a part of promoting Totally Wired, I worry about how effective this type of effort will be. Many parents struggle to just understand what their teens/tweens are really doing online in order to have face-to-face conversations about these issues — I have a hard time believing that many would sit down with a "suite of interactive resources."

And as with anything teens and tweens are asked to do at school, well interactive resources does sound better than a lecture, but if it feels like a lesson in "don'ts" (don't post lascivious photos, don't bully with technology), I worry that the response will be an eye-rolling, sighing "whatever." Especially if the idea is to sentence students that have already been caught to a session using Project Pro in the counselor's office.

Granted, I haven't seen the resources, so I have no idea how they were designed, whether they incorporated teen/tween input, or if they will come across as "lessons" vs. empowering content and tools to manage teens' digital lives. I hope that "Project Pro" is awesome and effective and that I'm wrong (though the name isn't working for me already).

The reality is that online reputation management is not just an issue for teens but for EVERYONE. According to a study posted on ReadWriteWeb:

Seventy-eight percent of social networking users are concerned about privacy, but most fail to act on it. And 80% of the users surveyed allow all or part of their profiles to be indexed by public search engines like Google, while 66% of users don't restrict any profile information from being publicly searchable. Perhaps even more astonishing: a whopping 59% of the 1100 surveyed said they weren't sure who could see their profile.

I'm honestly kicking myself a little bit because one of the many ideas I never executed on was a follow up to Totally Wired that would have been an interactive guide/website for teens created in the spirit of gURL's classic "Deal With It," covering a lot of this stuff in a way that didn't feel like school or lessons or some sort of online training. Meredith even suggested getting imperfect role model Vanessa Hudgens involved in this type of effort.

I appreciate any efforts to empower teens and tweens to better manage their digital lives and be safe online — I just hope they are executed in ways that will actually have an impact instead of just another software solution or website that a company can put their name on to say "we care about this issue." Maybe these groups should work with a super dynamic speaker like Josh Shipp — have him speak on this topic at schools across the country — followed by an interactive suite of tools that's positive, empowering and, like the gURL books, playful, funny and fun. I just booked my first speaking engagement with teens on this issue in March (frankly, I'm terrified)….I will definitely be calling Josh for tips!

Categorized under: Totally Wired, Web

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