How many of you have handed off your cell phone to your child to make a call, play games, take pictures, etc.? Well, you may want to be a bit more careful…
A friend of mine (let’s call her Susan) was recently telling me about a close call with her camera phone.
Susan was in the shower when her 5 year old daughter came into the bathroom and said, “Cheese!” and snapped a photo.
Susan immediately responded with a quick scolding about why you can’t take pictures of people in the shower, why her daughter should not be playing with her phone without her supervision, etc., but a phone call she received shortly after would make her stomach drop.
One of Susan’s friends called and asked, “Um…did you mean to post that video to Facebook today?”
After a few seconds of frantic questioning, Susan was relieved to find out that a different video had been posted, not the shower picture, but a safe for viewing video of some dogs they had seen the day before.
Lesson Learned
As technology advances, children are becoming quite adept at using smart phones, surfing the web, posting pictures, etc.
So it may be important to sit your child down and teach them one quick lesson about the Internet:
- What happens on the Internet, Stays on the Internet…FOREVER
And as parents, before you hand over that phone to provide some extra entertainment when you get stuck in line at a restaurant, you may want to make sure all other applications are locked down, you have signed out of your email and other social networking sites, and that before anything can be sent a passwords must be entered.
