For someone who spends her days studying and speaking with today’s youth, it’s easy to look negatively at the newest forms of communication such as Facebook, Twitter, chat rooms and IMs.  There’s nothing like training from the FBI, coupled with statistics, to make you want to pull the plug on any and all electronic forms of communication.  But the fact is that they are here to stay.  The youth of today, the Millenials (born after 1980), have only known life with a computer or cell phone.  So, let’s put a positive spin on life on the electronic highway.

Not too many generations ago, families lived close to each other.  The village did, in fact, raise children.  Kids would run down the street, safely moving from house to house.  Friends, family members and neighbors kept an eye on them and wouldn’t hesitate to point out pitfalls and bad behavior or to communicate with their parents.

Soon, families started moving across the states and we became more socially isolated – especially from our loved ones.  Families would get together once or twice a year and have to spend the week trying to catch up.

Then along came the world of social networking.  Facebook was originally founded for college students.  Students could set up a page and invite “friends” to join their small network.  Knowing that the rational part of a young person’s brain isn’t fully developed until age 24,  it’s not hard to imagine what students were putting on their pages in the early days.  Then the site became so popular that the inventors opened it up to the general public.  Many of us became concerned about on-line predators.  On the other hand, a large number of Gen-X’ers and Baby Boomers joined Facebook as well.  Now our circle of “friends” has expanded to include extended family members, old friends, old school mates and professional contacts.

Anthropologist Robin Dunbar estimates that our brain’s capacity for friends caps out at approximately 150 people.  So how do users manage friend lists of 300 and more people?  They make a distinction between closer friends and peripheral friends, and they use the News Feed portion of Facebook to keep up with peripherals.  The News Feed is a part of the wall where you can post what you are doing and how you are feeling at any given moment.  This means that my Aunt Kathleen can now follow my day.  Trust me, she’ll let me know if she’s concerned about something I’ve posted.

So we are once again back to living less private lives.  The virtual village is now helping to raise the child.  This is a good thing, because our kids have a wider safety net of adults who care about and stay in touch with them.  The other benefit is that through the News Feed, we strengthen our peripheral relationships.  We no longer have to spend the week catching up with each other, so when we do get together, the conversations are deeper and richer.

The important tools we can teach kids when on Facebook or other devices are to use the privacy settings available on the site and to friend only those individuals whom they know personally.  Finally, we want kids to think before they post because everything they say and show is public, and it’s forever!  With coaches, teachers, potential bosses, roommates and family members watching these News Feeds, kids are held to a higher level of accountability – which is a good thing.

By Colleen Brady, Health Educator, Jewish Community Services Prevention Education

Questions about parenting?  Send an email to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).  To learn more about how JCS can help you solve life’s puzzles, visit http://www.jcsbaltimore.org or call 410-466-9200.  Jewish Community Services is an agency of THE ASSOCIATED: Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore.