Originally published in Blue Line magazine November 2012
I caught my 15 year old daughter doing something extremely embarrassing the other day. I walked into the family room and there she was lying on the carpet, feet up on the couch and she was- if you can believe it, talking on the telephone.
I was stunned.
“What are you doing?” I said pointing to the adult only communication device.
She flashed me that you are too stupid to live look that only a teenager can pull off.
Her: “It’s a phone why wouldn’t I use it?”
Me: “I dunno, you have spent the last 4 years constantly texting, BBM’ing, Tweeting and Facebook’ing. I’ve never actually seen you use a telephone”
Her: “This is so much easier” as she rolled her eyes in disgust “And I don’t get creeped”
Interesting, I thought to myself. I wondered if my teen was getting weary of social media in general and did she just use “creep” as a verb?
My three teenage kids have always been the barometer for me on what’s in and what’s “so two hours ago”.
I knew about Down with Webster, hash tagging and Heelys before any of my fellow parents. My kids are continually opening my eyes to new opportunities and don’t hesitate to let me know what is passé.
Teenagers are realizing what, law enforcement already knows about Facebook; that communicating your likes, desires, wishes and friends builds a database on yourself.
Facebook sells this information to advertisers. Facebook ads reflect your interests which is no coincidence. But which other creepy people are also exploiting this open source information?
As a cop, it’s a wonderful tool for us to have criminals populate their own dossier profiles for us.
As we saw in the N.H.L. hockey riots last year in Vancouver, some suspects can’t help but post pictures of themselves committing crimes. They may as well just nominate themselves for arrest.
Gary Askin 