Online Dangers
Bringing up kids in the digital age is rough, because most
of the chapters in the parents’ handbook are obsolete. Can you imagine how your kids would react to the
advice: don’t talk to strangers?
“Dad, you must be
kidding. I have 140, 000 Instagram followers.”
O.K. Kids don’t want to hear any old-school wisdom but they
must understand that some wisdom is evergreen like, you reap what you sow and that
it also applies to online games.
What they say online or photos they post might come back to
bite them in the butt, when they want to be the next president of France or
Argentina. Their skeletons won’t be in
the cupboard but in a tweet, a YouTube video or Facebook friends who were cool
20 years ago but poisonous for today’s dreams.
Old school wisdom still kicks in most of the things we do,
like applying for a job or choosing a candidate to represent a political
party.
Former U.S. President Obama is working on his next book and
hopefully he will tell us how he was investigated inside out, right to left and
top to bottom, before the Democratic Party announced him as a U.S. presidential
candidate.
The only advice parents can give their kids is in the form
of two questions.
“What are you doing on
the internet?”
“Will it have a
negative effect on your dreams, down the line when you are grown up?”
Nonqaba waka Msimang is the author of Sweetness, a South
African novel.
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