Saturday, July 25, 2009

Needed: Millennial Generation Social Network Educators


Professionals are confessing & politicians post their secret location; some even hold weapons and tweet. These adults are all the ones that are typically giving minors advice on how to behave, be safe and responsible on the internet. But, who is protecting these innocent adults?

Social networking is as common as television, perhaps, even more.
Adults, parents and safety groups have been adamant about internet safety since they figured out how their babies are susceptible to predators. Many sites discuss safety precautions that can be taken to prevent internet fraud, assault and overall embarrassment for children, tweens & teens. However, who’s protecting the grown-ups?

Today we have congressman, celebrities and business executives having direct access to tools like Twitter. In the past, the celebrity's marketing assistants might update and maintain these various social networking sites; I’m beginning to think those are nice filters. Instead, we have politicians tweeting about their arrival in Iraq and governors updating statuses with weapons in their hands, thanks Governor Schwarzenegger (watch the video: http://twitvid.io/abv1). When will they learn?

I think the college students, graduate assistants and high school kids of America need to sit CEOs and politicians down and have a come to Jesus meeting. Hey, we can all do it over Skype or Gmail, they have video chat now.

For this post, I Googled 'internet safety' and rendered 109 million results. However, only one out of the first ten hits allegedly addressed internet safety for 'all ages'. The site, wiredsafety.org, has various topics, but most are geared toward teens, tweens, children and parents for online safety. This is proof that we have not provided equal assistance to one particular demographic. They need education too.

This is what our world has come to. We need to provide adequate education to the middle aged. Why can’t this be put into the stimulus plan for education? Internet etiquette/safety. I remember learning about how to write a cover letter and resume. Why can’t we teach parents and grandparents that putting all caps in an email is comparable to yelling?

Sample:CALL!

To me, that says, emergency. Call now. Not the case, Grandma got new glasses. Oh, I just left a meeting… Let me go tell my boss.


We can teach them practical soft skills for internet use. Will they all listen? Probably not, we didn't. But that never stopped them, and it shouldn't stop us.


o, I propose that everyonn the ose meals growing up, and of course brought us into this world.