Co-Founder of talkingtoteens.com
Andy Earle is a researcher who studies parent-teen communication and adolescent risk behaviors. He is the co-founder of talkingtoteens.com and host of the Talking to Teens podcast, a free weekly talk show for parents of teenagers.
Think you have a pretty good idea of what your teen is up to online? Don’t be so sure. Research indicates the majority of parents over-estimate their understanding of what teens are doing on the web. The reason is simple: teens today are really good at covering their digital tracks.
In this article, I’m going to show you the six most common strategies teenagers use to hide their Internet activity from the folks. This data comes from a study of over 1,000 teenagers and parents conducted by the internet security firm McAfee.
Nearly every teenager on the planet admits to lying about something—and the ones who don’t admit it are probably lying about that. But what do teens lie about most? Studies show the number one thing teens lie about is where they were (65%, Knox). Also, about half of teens (49%) say they’ve lied about their sexual experiences, 41% are have lied about who they were with, and 42% have been untruthful about their alcohol consumption (Knox).
Is your teen suddenly dropping slang terms like “Gucci”, “creeper”, and “lit” into casual conversation? Or have you overheard your teen talking to their “squad” about someone who is “throwing shade”? Today, teen slang can seem like a completely different language. What do all of these foreign words mean? Often, teen slang is entirely harmless. But sometimes teens use their shared “lingo” to disguise the true topic of their conversation from adults and discuss potentially worrisome behavior “on the low”.
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