so we're done with memorial day happy celebrations and now we're ready to go surfing is that what we're doing you ready to surf here to california that's what the music was talking about that would be a fun trip maybe we should take uh bring it home on the road sometime we should bring it home with sarah and teneal and let me just say i've had a great weekend besides memorial day i celebrated my wedding anniversary with my husband charl another year marriage is always a blessing so i'm excited about that and so of course i did my little obligatory post on facebook to the love of my life that's right it's not official until you do that oh we do that on anniversaries and on our birthdays you know we shout each other out so we're totally living the digi life yeah i did that term the digi life which is like short for digital life and that is a life that most of us are living now most of us are living a digital life and it can be a good thing but there are some things that we need to talk to our kids about that's true because school is out now and in most places and the kids are going to be spending a whole lot more time online just right hang around yeah they're not going to be at school all day you know so they're going to have a little bit more grandparents all that to be aware of you know what is going on out there in the digital world i've got some kind of i mean to me they're pretty startling facts so we're doing a different kind of surfing talk today well true not the kind we thought we're starting the internet okay all right but i wanted to share some of these uh facts that we've looked up from the national cyber security alliance and these are kind of scary to me 60 of teens have created an online account that their parents are unaware of what is my kid in that oh my god what is your kid in that that's frightening i know only 13 of teens say that their parents are fully aware of their online activities 13 that's hardly any and then it gets worse than now only 9 of teens said that they talk to their parents about any problems that they experience online so they have a problem they're not telling no yeah those are just kind of startling me to read these so we do need to get some some thoughts in our heads about what we can do to protect our kids um and maybe even brush up our skills a little bit right because this is the world now i mean everybody's going to be online and it's not going away right and like we said it could be good but we do have to protect ourselves and be aware okay so one of the things we need to talk about with our kids as parents we need to know our children's passwords for any device they may have and we need to actually monitor them don't just have the password and never log in oh that's a fail we've already earned a failing grade at my house have you yep well you know i think most parents would probably start out doing really well at that and then gradually over time yeah we just kind of forget but we need to be monitoring that because we need to be looking for anything that may be suggestive or hateful or appropriate in any manner we need to delete that and then have that discussion with our kids about why that was deleted and why it's not appropriate that's tough yeah it is but it's needed it is and you know we want our kids to have some freedoms but they need to realize some things about having a digi life that's true this is one of them one of the things too i think is very important is to know who they're talking to you know we need to browse our kids friends list again we have their password so we can actually click on their friends and if you see some of their suspicious like they're from other cities they look and appear to be older um some of their postings are concerning that type of thing you know see what it is they actually have in common with your child you know how they know this person ask questions about unknown people that you come across and that leads to the next point talk to them about not accepting friend requests people they don't know oh and adults need to do this too i don't understand it i'll get requests people i'm like i don't even know you no i've never seen you we have zero friends in common right where did you come from you don't even live in this area like i don't know you or this country yeah how do i know you but you know kids don't think like that children teenagers they love like it's really cool to have a high number of followers or friends yeah and it's easy you know for them to friend or let someone follow them that maybe not doesn't have the right intention and you know as adults you know we get a friend request somebody well me anyway first thing i do is look to see well who are our mutual friends because that might give me a clue okay either we went to school together or maybe we work in the same circles but kids don't really do that they don't do all that background checking and even if they do they might have friends in common with this person but who's to say the other kids know who this person is right so you can't just follow the crowd and friend somebody just because everybody else is oh my goodness no so you get on there and see who they're talking to and you don't know them there's some discussions that need to be going on at home yeah there are um speaking of discussions uh we need to talk about sexting yeah and the definition of that is sending sexually explicit messages whether it's words or pictures you know that's something we need to be aware of and remind our children whether they're children teenagers never to send or share a picture that you wouldn't want to share with every one of your family members including your grandma now that really is going to narrow with them that's right but wow that's a good way to look at it yeah if you don't want it like shown on the screen at the family reunion you do not need to inbox it to anybody you don't need to text it to anybody you don't need to post it wow right because you think you may be sending it to one person well who's to say they're not going to share it with the world even yeah they can share it with two other people who share it with you know four other people and it can just multiply that's true and you know our children are set up to think if there's this one person especially if they've been having conversation with this person online and they say hey why don't you send me a picture of you just wearing x y and z well i know them i've been talking to them two or three weeks oh it's for my eyes only well children don't think like adults think and so they'll send it via you know uh you know inbox thinking it's just for this person and there you go yeah we got to talk about these things don't rush it under the road no we can't even though maybe a little embarrassing for the parents to bring up but something we need to be aware of that's right so another um thing that we need to be aware of if there's a site or an app that your kids want to use but it's got an age tied to it you know that you need to be at least 13 or 18 to access them we don't need to lie and assist them in setting up an account those age requirements are there for a reason and there may be some things on this app or this website that they don't need to be exposed to yet oh i know and so many parents will you know do this set up accounts that should oh they're old enough to be on this and so they will help them determine what date to put in so that the computer thinks they're old enough i have a funny story about charleston when he was a lot younger before he was old enough to be on social media uh he came to me and he said i want to confess something and i said okay what is it he said i tried to sign up for facebook and i said well what happened he said it said on there that i had to be 14 years old and then there was a whole lot of other stuff on there that i didn't understand what they were trying to say and i said well you know what they were trying to say and he said no i said they were trying to say that you need to be 14 years old right and once you get 14 you'll understand what they were trying to say you're not old enough for this no so he tried to set up the account and couldn't figure out how to do it but at least he told you about it and they don't even realize that it could be dangerous you know so that goes all the way back to that first thing we talked about monitoring yeah like you've got to monitor what they're doing every once in a while do a search for your kids on social media just do random searches for your teenager on facebook and twitter and instagram and snapchat just see what they show up yeah yeah that might cut down on some of those online accounts that parents don't know about that's true but moving on just another reminder about inappropriate images you know we talk about tell your kids not to send pictures of themselves we also need to tell them if you come across pictures of anybody else or any type of vicious messages you know there's a lot of online bullying going on yeah it's becoming a problem so your friends might forward you a picture of somebody else that's in various stages of undress or an unflattering picture of somebody they want you to forward or just even like verbal like talking about people and it's in a group message well if you get involved in that yeah you're part of it so delete delete delete don't forward to anybody else even if you're like oh don't we find this so funny no it needs to stop with you try the golden rule approach and the golden rule is do unto other people as you would have them to do unto you you don't want it done to you don't do it to anybody else that would that would fix a lot of our children's dilemmas actually but and if it's something that's really malicious and hateful you need to tell somebody that's exactly right yeah delete it if somebody sends you something and it's inappropriate or whatever you need to let somebody know yeah and this is whether it's a child or an adult yes you know even if it's an adult that you're supposed to trust and they send you something that you know gives you goosebumps and you know it's not something you're supposed to be reading or looking at you need to tell somebody so along those lines if something like that happens you need to block that person you know you as the parent or talk to your kids about blocking people that make them feel uncomfortable some kids feel like it's mean though to block people well it's not you know i i it's not you don't have to friend everybody do you block people on social media there usually i can unfollow or something you know but yeah you don't have to remain friends with somebody that's constantly putting up things that you don't want to say or they get on your nerves or that kind of thing and you don't friend everybody you know i mean you just don't um you can hide people those kinds of things but if someone is posting something that's really bad or really troubling we need to tell our kids again tell let us know tell your teacher tell me tell the adult you trust right right and you know one thing some of us tell too much on social media and you know since kids are not as selective about their friends as we are they just ran in everybody so you know warn your kids about posting about upcoming plans especially trips you know they'll post looking forward to being gone to the bahamas for two weeks with the family that just lets anybody and everybody know how long you're gonna be gone and that everybody is gonna be gone oh my gosh yes i think this is important for adults too because i see a lot of people they'll be on vacation or like hey i'm getting ready for my cruise or yeah okay so i know i know where you're going how long you're gonna be gone yeah you're leaving basically saying my house is gonna be you know no one's gonna be here for a while right and especially when we start talking about kids this is gonna learn a predator in that area that's why it's so scary you know if we say we're going to chicago to visit on nancy for a week there could be someone on that friend's list who's not up to any good who could actually be a predator and they know what your child looks like because of the 12 000 pictures they posted last week and they know they're going to visit on nancy in chicago and it doesn't take very much detective work for them to be able to find out where your child is so not only can your belongings be compromised but your child's life could be compromised yeah your safety you know i know we're not telling people we're not saying these things to scare people we just want people to be real exactly you know if this is the world we're living in a digital world which has many many good things yes many but always with a good thing there's always that you're listening to us because of this big and we're a good thing right and these are things that we're going to do that we do or will do with our own children you know it's just being wise about how to use digital technology in a safe way right so another great setup to do is to keep your privacy settings updated on all your devices your computer your phone your tablet all that so if you need to keep your privacy settings updated you need to do um the constant updates you need to have a malware system on there that fights all viruses uh but still everybody needs to be careful with personal data you know we order stuff on our phone well if you leave your phone laying around you got your amazon account it's tied to your this tied to your bank account you know i don't want to have to pull out my credit card every time i do something so save card save card save card so many people online banking all your information's right there we just need to be very very careful with that kind of stuff yeah because i mean online stuff lasts forever it does not go away even these you know the services that say hey you can type something in so many minutes or so many hours it disappears never be found again don't fall for it once you put something out there in cyberspace you can't get it back and i mean it could come up years from now when a child is applying for college applying for scholarships applying for professional jobs anything oh my gosh because what you're posting at 18 is not what your life is going to be like when you're 28. aren't you so glad we didn't have social media when you're 18? every day girl. I got to but it's the reality now that these teenagers live in so a slip on social media could cost you so much.
it could and we've seen we've seen famous people have you know lose their careers over things that happen online comments that they made you know pictures that they posted it could be detrimental it all it all comes down to common sense and again like i love that you reference the golden rule because that's what it is like don't do anything to anybody that you wouldn't want done to you that's right so we can all have happy digital lives yes and we should i mean this is the wave of where we are now and it can be a great thing yes so let's keep it great right let's keep it great and fun and i love seeing my friend's kids growing up and people that i wouldn't be in touch with from high school and stuff now i feel like we haven't lost that connection that's true and thank you for allowing us to be part of your digital life each and every week you're on greening at home we wouldn't have it any other way and in the words of bob marley live the life you love i love the life you live until next time you