I want to say Thank You to everyone!! Due to this thread and the original thread, I managed to stay highly entertained all night at work.....on what was supposed to be a slow boring night. In no way am I making fun of anyone.....but it was so hard to keep up with who was who, and just when I thought I had it down.......someone would change the subject and it would throw me all off again. Out of pure curiosity, I did some searching on Twitter and Instagram.
Now here's my question/situation (will you please trust that I do monitor my 15 yo daughters social network and have taught her the safety basics, so that doesn't become the issue):
Thanks to this thread, I found out that my daughter did fall victim to a poser earlier this year. Nothing lost, nothing gained so it's not that big of a deal. I believe it was Twitter where the post began. It was the one about the young man that attempted suicide. CP was so saddened by this. She and I have had looooong conversations about self-esteem and confidence. And with my history of depression, I have explained it to her in detail as well. She really does feel sorry for someone who feels so bad about themselves they no long want to live. She started communicating with him, through tweets. Nothing major, just checked on him here and there. I just told her that the whole thing was a lie and she was shocked. She didn't get hurt by this or anything.
While looking on Twitter and Instagram last night, I noticed many user names that hide gender and anything else. How can you tell if a person is just a fan of cheer or really a cheerleader. Just look through some of the usernames , and you will see what I'm talking about. She would never get into a relationship with someone she met online, nor will she give her location. But she does follow "good" (for lack of a better word) cheerleaders. I'm sure if she had known the Erica girl, she would have tried to follow her. With so many fake accounts and questionable ueser names, how would she know if this person is real or not.
On Instagram I found a user "keepcalmandcheeron". They have over 9k followers. How do I know this is a real person and not someone stealing pics??
Suggestions will be greatly appreciated!
In my honest (and un-educated) opinion I do believe this thread is a good idea and I plan on having my daughter read both so that she can see what is going on.
