I’ll Share Mine if You Share Yours

Last week the NY Times shared another “aha” moment for parents of teenagers in the piece, “Young, in Love, and Sharing Everything, Including a Password.”  The article highlights the rising trend of adolescents sharing online and phone passwords with a dating partner or best friend.

Yes, the days of sharing letterman jackets have been replaced by shared Facebook passwords.  According to Pew Internet research, 1 in 3 online teens has shared a password with a friend or significant other. Nearly half of girls ages 14-17 have shared passwords.

Access to online media and texting from a boyfriend or girlfriend’s phone carries potentially hefty implications, adding yet another to the list of concerns parents need to become aware of in order to help their digital-native children manage the new social reality in which they are growing up.

One parent interviewed for the article, child psychologist Winifred Lender, shared that she “had her three sons sign ‘digital contracts’ that outline terms for how much media they will consume, how they will behave online and that they will not share passwords.”  When her son was asked to exchange a password recently, he had a great fall-back: “He blamed it on his parents…He said, ‘If I give you my password, my mom will have a cow.’ ”

This trend opens up a great opportunity to talk about trust with teenagers you know or who live in your home. Ask questions like: Who do you trust with private personal information? What motivates the sharing—is it because you trust them or because you want to be sure they aren’t hiding anything from you? What information should be off-limits or protected more closely? What do you gain by sharing a password with a boyfriend or girlfriend? What might you gain or lose by saying no? What happens if the relationship ends suddenly or that person doesn’t handle your personal information the way you thought they might?

©2012 Fuller Youth Institute