Wireless parenting: Beauty and the Mist

This guest post was written by Oscar Habeenzu, author of “The Visibility Code”, Chairman of The Advertising & Publicity Club of Harare, Vice Chairman of The Online Publishers Association and Publisher of TheBehaviourReport.com

On July 4 2012, I took up a challenge to bring enlightenment to mothers and grandmothers, through the Harare Women International Society, and chose to speak on how to manage relationships on the internet at such uncertain times as we are in; hence the title.

Is the Internet Beautiful or is it Misty?

There is the beauty side of the internet, and the misty side of the internet, that so often confuses parents and guardians. The beautiful side of the internet is the connecting, interacting, and transacting aspects that the internet has brought to businesses, and most importantly to families across the world. There is a fulfilment that comes with using the internet to connect and interact across distances and time zones with loved ones as though they are just in the same room.

However, whilst celebrating the beauty, parents often get frightened by the misty aspects of the internet. Navigating through the internet often is as though driving on a misty morning, whence you are not able to see where you are going except a few mitres ahead, posing a grave danger to your desired destination. The balance of the beauty and the mist is what concerns most guardians that they quickly give up on trying or avoid the internet as much as possible. Sadly, this is what happened with new media inventions like the Telephone, the Radio, the Television, and even to the Pay TVs of this world.

The advent of social media for the parent, in my opinion, is not a danger, but rather an opportunity to relate to teenagers in a new, open, yet tightly marked manner. I see social media and parenting as playing the Italian football game at the world cup – they may look like they do not know what they are doing, and even have old horses in the reigns, but rest assured you will not find Italian dropping out before the semi-finals at least. Parents need to bring the game to their teenagers, but in a socially intelligent manner.

Defining Public Privacy

There is a public private aspect of the internet that sometimes parents are failing to manage. The current teenage generation seems to think that everything is public yet it is not, against the thought that “my private will automatically become public”, which is not it.

I would like to help parents navigate the internet and emotions of their teenagers by giving a few basic understandings of what social media now brings to their lives. The internet is not a weapon of mass destruction, but a platform for whatsoever relational directing – destructive or productive. It is up to the parent, as it is up to the child, to choose life or death.

Whilst in the prior media generation, of colour TV and DVD, the parents worried about pornography, in these times of social media, parents need to beware of “lornography” – being “light” pornography and eye candy. It is not actually intercourse, but just a splish-splash of exposed body parts, with a few sexual moves that are suggestive, and the rest you can finish off.

Even in such a situation, the mode of intervention is not a ban on certain websites, social media applications, but rather an intelligent infiltration of the enemy camp per se.

We need to realise that the social media is the playground of “introverted extroverts”, teenagers who do not necessarily air out their views freely in the physical world, but are extremely verbal in cyberspace. The loud mouths or the physical world are not the rulers of cyberspace, but the silent ones are. The loud ones are like hyenas, ever laughing and scavenging on dead things, but the silent ones are like the lion that sleep all day only to power play at deliberated targets and carefully coordinated manners.

Social media has also brought security in insecure environments for teenagers as there is a default instinct that wants to be seen or heard and it seems social media provide moral solace as did reggae music to Jamaicans during the oppression years. Teenagers are seeking social solace in internet networking applications as they express their inadequacies as a means of seeking attention for unresolved issues that could be stemming from neglect or shire delinquency.

What is Facebook and Twitter to the Parent?

Even if you, as the parent or guardian, do not like Facebook, but for the sake of peace and sanity, and relational development of teenagers, you may have to be a “watchman”, watching them and discreetly commenting and rebuking their inadequacies.

Realise that teenagers are now much closer to people outside their support circles, washing dirty laundry outside, than there are with their default circles. And for this reason, parents need to approach their parenting responsibilities from an undercover manner. It is possible to connect with your teenagers as a parent, as there is no limit on influencing those who influence your children. Become social media buddies, from an undercover or an undercover perspective in order to shape certain aspects of your children.

In 2011, I created a Facebook account for my son, who was only one year-old at that time. As much as there may be so many dangers, I know when he turns either years, iPad and other handhelds will be a basic necessity in school and social media, as Facebook will be a competition, especially “who was first on Facebook”, this placing him at a high social status. In thus doing, I have begun to influence his social behaviour before he even knows how to use the internet, and thus gaining trust as he grows. A bit strange on my part, but I believe that going into the future of your child and then solving parenting backward helps in this dynamic again of technology.

Back To Basics of Parent/Child Relationships

There are three things one does on the internet – CONNECT, INTERACT, and/or TRANSACT. The first thing we all do is to connect with someone at a specific time for a specific reason. After we connect, the next thing we do, even so over and over again, is to interact

There is a lot of pride in our generation and that has affected how the younger relates to the older. The younger knows more than the older, but does that necessarily mean that the younger understands more than the older about life and relationship management? We live in a time when knowledge has increased, but does that mean that we should be afraid to parent our teenagers even if they are virtual years ahead of us?