When many of us were growing up we were very protective of our bedrooms. We didn’t want anyone coming in to our rooms uninvited; not siblings, not our parents. We posted “Keep out!!!!” or “Danger, Radioactive Materials” signs on our doors. We would, of course, grant access to our friends and then immediately shut the door for privacy. Woe to parents who cleaned our rooms accidentally discovered cigarettes, condoms, alcohol, marijuana, or other contraband. Oh the feelings of betrayal on both sides.

Some things never change. Many teens are still territorial about their private spaces, but these areas now extend to virtual worlds that many parents don’t realize exist. Even if they’ve heard of such things as FaceBook, MySpace, Xanga, or Blogger, they have no idea how much time their teen is spending there. As parents, how can you guide and protect your child when you don’t know where she is? You can not (and should not) be with her every minute of every day whether it is in the physical world or the virtual world. Because of your own familiarity with the risks inherent in the real world you teach her how to safely cross the street, exercise caution with strangers, and how to call for help when they need it. But are you as familiar with the risks in the virtual worlds that your daughter inhabits?

In a survey conducted of random sample of Castilleja upper school students conducted by the Tech Department last spring, 34% of students reported having a personal web site or blog My observation of behavior in the computer labs indicates that this percentage has increased remarkably, and that students in the middle school are also active participants. This is in keeping with national trends being reported as reported in recent articles in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times describing a the current generation of teens who have grown up in a digital world. Writers are having a field day inventing clever names for this generation: digital natives, generation M, iKids, the net generation, and screenagers.

What’s a parent to do? Here’s my advice:

1. Educate yourself. Go online and visit the web sites previously mentioned (MySpace, Xanga, Blogger). Google your child’s name and see what (if anything) comes up. Talk with other parents about what experiences they may have had with their children using such web sites. Once you have gathered some information, and your wits, you’re ready for step 2.
2. Talk with your daughter. Ask her if she has a blog, or if she has friends with blogs. (I assure you that at least one of the two answers will be yes.) Converse (this is a conversation, not an interrogation) about blogs: what she likes about them, what she doesn’t like. You may ask her to show you some blogs, including her own if she has one. Ask her who reads her blog (most blogs allow you to be available to the general public or only to invited readers.) This should be an easy conversation, not an awkward one.
3. In a very unscientific survey, I asked about twenty upper schoolers how many of them had blogs. Sixteen raised their hands. Then I asked how many of their parents know that they have a blog. About twelve hands went up. So the good news is that many of you may already know that your child has a blog, or in the very least their are other parents you can speak with who know that their child has a blog. Step three is to make sure that your child understands the attributes of cyberspace that, I find, they often overlook: context, openness, misrepresentation, and persistence.
   • Context. Written communication, the most common form of discourse in blogs, often do not fully convey the context for remarks that are made. Email users understand how easy it is for messages to be misconstrued. Managers have learned that email is NOT a good mechanism to communicate emotionally-laden messages. Teenagers don’t know that. They often write in a stream-of-consciousness mode with little regard for how something may sound to another. Sometimes their remarks can be very hurtful to the people they’re writing about, even when they believe that person is not reading their blog. Which brings us to…
   • Openness. Students, especially middle schoolers who are just getting into this, have no idea how powerful search engines like Google are. Information they think is private may be found by other computers. They may believe that only the friends that they have invited to read their blog are doing so—forgetting how much a social activity this is among friends who gather around a computer to read blogs with one another. I inadvertently caused a few raised eyebrows among some of our seniors in the computer lab the other day by suggesting that college recruiters might be looking at the blogs of applicants.
   • Misrepresentation. I have previously written about cyberbullying, and that a contributor to phenomenon this was the anonymity provided by virtual personas. In addition to anonymity, the web allows you one to create a completely false persona, which is exactly what online predators do. Children need a healthy skepticism of anyone they meet online who they do not know in the physical world.
   • Persistence. In some ways cyberspace seems so fleeting. But this is illusory. Information that is put on a blog may continue to live on even when the blog is “deleted” by the user. It’s been cached by search engines. Backed up on server tapes. Visitors may have downloaded files, examined the HTML code, or even taken screen shots. In short once it’s out there, it’s out there. Students have no idea!
4. Repeat steps 1-3. Keep educating yourself, stay in dialog with your daughter, and help her understand the characteristics of cyberspace that are so easily overlooked.

In conclusion the worse thing you can do is to try to forbid this activity. Many teens, who are already finding ways to assert their independence from their caregivers, will simply find it all the more attractive. And indeed, blogs can be a healthy and entertaining means of self-expression. The key is communication. After all, that’s what blogs are supposed to be all about.

I finally succumbed to my iPhone envy and purchased one this weekend at the Apple store in Palo Alto, California.

Arriving about an hour early for Sunday’s 11:00 AM opening, my wife and I found ourselves to be about thirtieth in line.

We’d seen lines at the store like this since the iPhone launch, so we were expecting this. Besides, we’re right across from a Peet’s coffee, so we knew we could take turns waiting in line and caffeinating ourselves as needed.

Apple concierges were outside handing people leaflets explaining what they’d need when we go inside, and cautioning us that 16 GB black iPhones were in short supply at their location. While in line, I took their advice and called my current carrier, Verizon, and I am glad I did. The agent at Verizon were very nice, cryptically hinted that “maybe we’ll see you back in a few months” when I mentioned my reason for changing to ATT was the iPhone, and told me that I would need my Verizon account number to complete the transaction in the Apple store, something that I had not thought to bring with me.

The doors opened at 11:00, and the I was cheered when the first person left the store 8 minutes later, new iPhone in hand. “What’s this about activation taking hours?”, I thought.

Our turn came about 11:20, and I was handed off to a nice young man who started working on our phones right away: two, 16 GB white iPhones.

We emerged from the store  2.5 hours later! Why 8 minutes for one guy, and two and a half hours for us?

A variety of reasons, it appears:

1. Problems with the handheld scanner used by the Apple employee (or user error) in scanning our credit card. It must have been scanned 50 times by this dude, while another employee was able to scan it with one try.
2. ATT and Apple servers not playing nice with each other. Registration of our first (primary) account while long (45 minutes) was ultimately successful. We were porting our exiting phone numbers. Perhaps this made it more difficulty. Who knows?
3. Registration of the second account – to put us ATT’s family plan – was a nightmare. First ATT was reporting a failed credit card – the same one they had just approved for the primary line. A call to our CC company (another 10 minutes wasted) said that they had NOT put a credit hold on the card. Back to ATT.
4. ATT claimed that it was not a problem on their end. They were reporting (now) OK on the credit card. But not Apple’s servers were disagreeing with that.
5. Apple rep suggested we try again, setting up second account as an individual account and change it ATT later. Fine – anything to get this done! Didn’t work.
6. New Apple rep comes over, suggesting registering a different phone, runs the card himself and gets green lights across the board. Second phone registered, activated, and on family plan. Yea!
7. Not done yet. Can’t add Applecare to second phone. They’ve “run out.” How in the heck to you run out of warranties? Tell me I will get a call from the store manager when they come in.
8. I ask about adding the second phone to my recently migrated .Mac account, to create a family plan. I’m told to go to the web site and upgrade the plan from individual to family. So I login to my account while at the store. No dice, and’t upgrade. Apple rep tells me to try again in a week to let the servers catch up.

In the midst of all this (just before step 2) I see an Apple exec I know shopping in the store and make small talk with him. He acknowledges that there’s been some delays with the activation. Little did I know that I’d be there for another hour and a half before I’d get out.

Am I a happy camper? Well, we have our phones and I am glad to have them. And as a person with a long respect for Apple I can forgive missteps. But this experience is not what builds market share, and are it was not an insanely great experience. It was just insane.