Student Becomes The Teacher

As adults, parents, educators or community and businesses leaders, we often look to past experiences as a means of teaching and mentoring others. Therefore it can be difficult to let those who we traditionally teach (such as children and young adults) become the teachers।

When it comes to social networking (FaceBook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube and others), perhaps this is the time for us to become the listeners. The Pew Internet & American Life Project has released a study that suggests young adults and children are becoming better at managing their online reputation than adults. Because they have a better understanding of the technology, its pitfalls and strengths, when it comes to on-line reputation management, young adults are becoming the experts।

Those who are 18- 29 are more likely than adults (ages 30-59) to do the following: Change their social networking privacy settings, delete unwanted comments or remove their name (or tags) from photos.

When it comes to trust, believe it or not, young adults are less trusting of social networking sites than their parents. Young adults are more attentive to social networking site privacy changes and keep up to date with trends. When asked “how much of the time they think they can trust social networking sites like FaceBook, MySpace and LinkedIn, 28% of users ages 18-29 say ‘never’.” 19% of those 30-49 year olds and 14% of 50-64 year olds say they never trust the sites।

Clearly as parents and adults we need to continue to discuss, teach and remind our children about the dangers in the world we live in. We caution our children about talking to strangers, giving out names or posting too much information on social networking sites. We check their social media pages and become their “friends”, cautiously, sometimes anxiously, watching over them. Clearly the 18-29 year olds in the Pew study learned good habits from someone, a tip of the cap to them for remembering and putting these good habits to use।

FaceBook and other social media sites have seen a boom in the number of 35+ users. According to www.checkfacebook.com, on June 1, 2010, 17% of all U.S. FaceBook users were 35-44 years old (over 12-million users). 14-17 year olds account for just over 9% of FaceBook accounts. Nearly ¼ of all FaceBook users are 18-24 year olds।

These last two demographic groups, particularly those in their upper teens through early 20’s are applying to college and looking for their first “real” job. Their reputation is very important to them. How they portray themselves is what likely drives them to be more cautious than we would expect. Perhaps this is the time for us to be looking to them for advice on the ways of the world, at least the Web 2।0 world.

The Pew study goes into many details about trends, age differences and social marketing use patterns. I would strongly suggest reading the report (or at least the summary).

http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Reputation-Management/Summary-of-Findings.aspx?r=1