Fewer Close Kept Secrets and Less Room for Doubt

Rumors and the juvenile urge to acknowledge private matters to less than trustworthy peers has been a well-observed adolescent phenomenon. But today that phenomenon has crashed head on into one of the digital age’s commonly spoken proverbs: What happens on the internet stays on the internet.

Philip and his friend Vienna had suffered personal violation on formspring only a handful of days earlier. Philip and Vienna recovered well and they recovered quickly. Erica suffered a much greater violation—one to her personal privacy—and it is unlikely she will recover so quickly, so easily or so completely.

Initially, Erica’s peers probably paid little attention to the increasing banter on Erica’s formspring account asking her, “Is it true you are no longer a virgin?” Teenage girls get asked no shortage of rude and personal questions in this venue. The virgin question was tame by comparison. But then one day it seems that Erica caved into mounting social pressure she was getting online and offline to confirm the rumors.

“I regret it, but yeah,” was her first response to confirm the rumors. It was followed by multiple affirmative responses as if she was cleaning out a backlog of questions on her formspring queue that she had left unanswered for a while. At first one might have concluded that Erica’s older sister was playing a prank. But time proved otherwise. Erica never erased her answers. Instead on the following day, she began to answer a next wave of questions that pressed for details. It did not take much intelligence to understand the basics of what had happened.

Erica had indeed relinquished her virginity. Since this was a hookup and not a long term boyfriend, the guy had little motivation to keep Erica’s secret. He probably bragged at least to his closest friends. As the extremely popular girl, Erica would be a prize in the eyes of most high school guys who merely got the opportunity to spend a little time kissing her. Erica’s first time would be the prize of all prizes. He told some friends, at least one of them leaked the story to others and then the rumors spread like fire.

Eventually the direct questions and the ones written to her on formspring reached critical mass and Erica felt compelled to answer. Erica claims it was voluntary, even through she regrets it. As a parent, I wonder whether or not she was knowingly or unknowingly under the influence of Ecstasy or another illegal substance that would make her uncharacteristically agreeable to sex. The thought makes me cringe. That level of detail was not disclosed. So far, Erica has also resisted the many formspring questions that directly ask her with whom she shared her first time. Again I cringe at the likely scenario that it was someone much older and possibly even someone above the age for which state laws would make this a statutory rape. Erica at age fourteen was very, very young.

When I was in high school, I would catch rumors of girls relinquishing their virginity. Sometimes these rumors came with details and sometimes they did not. It was often with a much older guy. As I got older, more and more of the guys I knew would recite both vague and detailed stories of their supposed first experience, best experience or most recent experience. But the girl in question was never named to me. And no girl ever admitted or shared the details of her first experience with me. An admission like Erica’s highly public and highly authenticated admission on formspring is unique to this generation, but it is probably all of the sudden quite common.

With room for doubt only left regarding the minor details Erica still withholds, the rumors will continue while the main facts can no longer be denied. What happens on the internet stays on the internet. And what stays on the internet affects the offline world. It will no doubt affect Erica’s offline world. But what happens to Erica in the real world is a story that deserves its own post.

Great Outcome, But Did I Over-Parent?

Perhaps this is a normal part of parenting a teen. But it seems like more and more often, I am finding myself undecided as to whether I am over-parenting. I still question whether or not I should have taken Philip to see his first R-Rated movie at age fourteen. I still question the degree to which I intervened in how Philip carried out his relationship and eventual breakup with Layla. And now, I question how much I intervened helping Philip to nail down his first summer job.

Summer is difficult for fifteen-year-olds. Fifteen-year-olds are too old for traditional summer camp, but not old enough for most jobs. And it is already difficult for teens to nail down gainful summer employment. Back when I was fifteen, I worked for minimum wage as a weekend pool attendant. That was a frustrating summer. I didn’t even work every weekend. The following summer when I was sixteen was even more frustrating because I was unemployed. I was hoping Philip would enjoy something better.

Philip had one huge advantage. He did not need any more income. He already commanded a high hourly wage refereeing. That meant he could work for free as an intern somewhere. Rather than going through the usual channels like the vocations office at Hermes High School, I decided to get creative. I thought about Philip’s actual skills and abilities and how he could actually deliver value in a business context.

I found my creative solution in the heart of leading-edge business creativity: An online advertising agency. The advertising agency was conveniently located a short walk from one of the city bus stops in Santa Carla. I knew the CEO but could not say I was on the best terms with him. This was going to be interesting, and it was going to be fun.

I first pitched the idea to Philip. In exchange for the chance to do interesting and relevant work during the summer, he would be willing to work for free or at most a modest stipend. The idea was simple. He would research, identify and at least partially qualify relevant youth-oriented websites for the agency’s clients to potentially place online advertisements. Philip liked the idea. But the hard part was ahead.

Next I contacted the CEO. Since the CEO was an avid user of online tools, I was able to contact him via instant messenger. “Hi Ken. Do you have a minute? I have a business idea that might have huge appeal.” When he responded favorably, I continued with my pitch. “My son is an honors student at Hermes High School. He earns $15 - $25 per hour refereeing, so he doesn’t need to earn any additional money this summer. He’s willing to work for free or for only a modest stipend in order to gain meaningful experience in a summer internship. We were thinking he could assist your advertising executives by doing research on the internet to identify high-traffic, youth-oriented sites on which to place advertisements for your clients.”

“Hmmm,” Ken typed back to me on the instant messenger. “Let me think about it as well as run the idea by a couple of my account managers. Give me until next Tuesday. Then message me again.” We had passed the first screen. When Tuesday came along, Ken agreed to schedule an interview for Philip. We scheduled it during a business day when Philip was on his Spring break. Philip dressed in the jacket, oxford cloth shirt, dress pants and dress shoes we had bought for him to wear for dances just three and a half months earlier. The pants were already so tight he could barely button them around his waist. I had shown Philip the advertising agency’s website and had explained how to handle an interview.

The agency was doing better than it had been the last time I had visited. They were in a new office that sported bright wall paint in the company’s color on the North and South facing walls. There were high ceilings and fifteen to twenty, seven foot trees in boulder-sized pots. Most of the staff members were in their twenties or early-thirties. The exceptions were Ken and CFO. In short, the place was hip – or whatever word Philip would use to mean hip. A recently hired account executive had been scheduled to practice his corporate presentation to his manager. Ken had Philip sit in on the presentation to determine whether or not Philip could grasp the company’s business model.

Philip passed their final screen and was offered an internship. It was a big score in his mind and in my mind. I expect Philip will have fun and will learn a lot. He’ll also get up to take up to two weeks off, so that his summer won’t be all work. Philip will need to regularly referee on weekends in order to maintain his desired teen lifestyle. But as a package it looks good. Still, I wonder if I over-parented. The internship was my brain-child, not his. I hope I modeled going off the beaten path rather than simply doing it for him. Time will tell. At this point in Philip’s life, when it comes to his success in life I am going to err in the direction of over-parenting.

Shutting Down the Cyber-Bully

For two months now, Philip and Vienna have been flirting but they are not even close to being in an official relationship. A small number of their peers know or suspect that it was Vienna who sent the anonymous rose and card to Philip at school the Friday before Valentine’s Day. Regardless of whether their friendship develops into a romance, Philip highly values Vienna’s friendship, admiration and respect.

On a recent Friday, Philip and Vienna were in PE class playing softball. Philip hit a line drive squarely into Vienna’s ankle. Knowing my son gets particularly upset when he hurts somebody, it is almost certain that Philip apologized far too profusely to the point where Vienna started to get visibly embarrassed and some of their peers in PE probably even started snickering among themselves. Still, it should have been an isolated event of little long term consequence.

But on that Sunday afternoon, Philip took a look at Vienna’s formspring page. Formspring has gotten quite a lot of media attention lately on the topic of cyber-bullying. Some blame posts on formspring as what finally drove a promising teenage girl to commit suicide. Whether or not one believes formspring encourages the practice of cyber-bullying, it is certainly a good venue to practice it. The reason is formspring allows people to anonymously post messages directed to particular individuals. And despite the frequent rude postings, many teens including Vienna love their formspring accounts.

And so on Sunday, Philip saw a conversation that began with an anonymous party apologizing for hitting Vienna in the ankle during PE. Philip found it strange and disconcerting that someone was pretending to be him, especially since Vienna seemed annoyed “We’re good. PLEASE stop apologizing.” But then it got worse.

The pretender continued the dialog and made Philip look like an insensitive idiot by writing “Sure. Sorry.” With each new post from the pretender, he or she was making Philip appear more and more invasive. In turn, Vienna’s responses indicated she was getting progressively agitated and uncomfortable with the exchange. The pretender did an amazing job imitating the way Philip talks, although the pretender completely failed at imitating how Philip writes online. Eventually Vienna told the pretender not to speak to her. But the pretender kept pushing for two more posts that painted Philip as desperate to elicit a friendly response from Vienna without any respect for her wish to be left alone.

Philip was understandably horrified. He wanted to correct things with Vienna, but he also wanted to show respect for her request not to speak with her. He went into school Monday quite upset about the situation and not knowing what to do. But his concerns were soon put to rest.

Early in the day, Nancy approached Philip and asked him if he had seen Vienna’s formspring page. Philip lied and said no. Nancy then went on to explain that someone had been pretending to be Philip on Vienna’s formspring account and had gotten rude. Nancy told Philip that Vienna and her friends knew it was not Philip and that they had a reasonably good idea who was actually harassing Vienna as well as trying to make Philip look like a creep. In short, Vienna and her friends didn’t want Philip to worry about the matter in the slightest. On Monday after school, Philip and Vienna shared a brief online chat using Facebook’s instant messenger. Everything was cool. If anything, the event on formspring had brought the two one step closer. Vienna had clearly forgotten how embarrassed she had felt in PE.

Philip and Vienna’s experience demonstrates that teens are often wiser than we might expect. They are not always fooled or intimidated by cyber-bullies. But it also demonstrates that cyber-bullying is very much alive and well on the internet. For those who are less socially adept and confident, those facing a particularly stressful time in life, as well as those needing medical intervention to treat depression or anxiety, cyber-bullying can be the cause of great hurt, misunderstanding and worry. But for the majority of kids, I believe there is no need to panic. Under normal circumstances, a teen’s reputation is established in day-to-day interaction. That reputation is not likely to be suddenly be torn down by a cyber-bully, not even one crafty enough to imitate the finer details of Philip’s speaking mannerisms.