Bad Parenting May Keep SEOs In Business For Years

But for the fact that I was the recipient of a gag wake-up call from Hannah Montana, I never would have known or cared that Miley Cyrus, the 15-year-old actress who plays Hannah Montana, has been taking pictures of herself on her cell phone. When I went searching for the Hannah Montana gag site that had been used to annoy me (the incoming call appears to come from your own number), I found a plethora of news stories about young Miley posing for Vanity Fair magazine AND for her cell phone.

Hollywood’s child stars have a long-established reputation for chasing the wilder side of life. At least one or two Mousketeers, for example, are said to have fallen into the shadowy clutches of men’s magazines or worse. Dana Plato, who was the sweetheart daughter on “Diff’rent Strokes” for several years, was fired when she became pregnant (she was married at the time and no longer a teenager). Unable to rebuild her career, she ventured briefly into soft porn before eventually breaking a few laws and dying a sad, lonely death.

Britney Spears is perhaps this generation’s best-known former child-star-turned-tabloid-fodder but she has a lot of company. Her younger sister Jamie Lynn Spears has unfortunately stepped onto the path of public self-destruction, too.

Now, nothing is to say that today’s current batch of child stars and former child stars who are still gathering news won’t turn things around and create some positive headlines. But even when those days arrive in their lifelines, the things they have done that are well documented on the Internet will still be hanging around. Some of today’s child stars may never live down their rollicking antics.

This problem, as many of you no-doubt know, extends well beyond the child-like rich and famous. Throughout the United States (and I would guess a fair number of other industrialized nations), teenagers are posing for pictures in ways their grandmas and grandpas never would have imagined. These pictures find their ways onto Web sites, into the underground media of cell phones and memory sticks, and etch permanent or nearly-permanent scars across the good fortunes and reputations of future business leaders and public servants.

The problem of unrestricted self-exploitation is so endemic that most parents in the U.S. are caught completely by surprise when their friends and neighbors show them pictures of their children in compromising positions — because they never knew about the problem in the first place. That is, we have empowered children to share themselves via the Internet and cell phones and other technology without putting into place proper restrictions and monitors to ensure the kids remain safe from their own unsound judgement.

Many families tolerate their children getting drunk because “it’s better than doing hard drugs” — never mind the fact that drunk kids kill themselves and other people in car accidents, engage in horrifying acts of violence against each other, take revealing photos of themselves, pass out in strangers’ houses where they are ridiculed, molested, or raped, commit burglaries, robberies, and other crimes. The U.S. Government estimates that Juveniles were involved as victims or offenders in 38% of all violent crimes in which the victim could estimate the age of the offender(s), 1993-2003.

Juveniles commit an estimated 15-25 per cent of all violent crimes in the United States (number is based on 2002 data).

Of nearly 16,000 murders committed in 2002, 848 were committed by people under the age of 18. There were 95,136 recorded “forcible rapes” in 2002, of which about 44% were cleared (an arrest or court appearance was made), and of those 44% approximately 12% were juvenile offenders.

In a country with more than 300,000,000 people that may seem like such a very small percentage, but kids are clearly doing drugs, drinking, driving without licenses, driving under the influence, racing, engaging in unprotected sex, and posing for pictures on their cell phones in larger numbers than, say, 25 years ago, 50 years ago, 75 years ago.

Those kids who go to jail (as adults), who are identified through online networks as participants in illegal activities, and are otherwise tarnished by their own behaviors will one day have to deal with the consequences of their actions. The parent who says, “At least my kid didn’t hurt anyone” isn’t stopping to think about how much their kid is hurting him- or herself.

The Internet is a very unforgiving place in which to dangle your sins, weaknesses, and mistakes. There is little to no sympathy in the harsh, judgemental world of spell-flames, gang-flames, and pariah-manufacturing character assassination that permeates the Web. Every blogger has the potential to say something in anger or frustration, revenge or jealousy, about someone else. Every Web forum, mailing list, and news group has the potential to turn into a roiling hotbed of criticism and abuse that won’t be deleted or retracted regardless of what happens to the agitators.

The pictures our kids put online will honor or haunt them forever. They may not even know they are the butt of jokes and rude comments for years.

Parents need to teach their children not only about moral responsibility but also about self-responsibility. As the media have focused more and more on child predators kids (and parents alike) have begun erecting safeguards against enticements from strangers — although some kids apparently go looking for trouble, especially if they live in troubled homes.

But when was the last time you sat down with your children and said, “Whatever you do on your cell phone, you’re doing in a picture window in front of the entire world.”? You cannot get that picture back. You cannot take back those stupid, silly childish remarks. You cannot prevent people from listening in on your conversations when you’re sitting in a public place, talking at the top of your voice to your best friend about how drunk you were at that party last night.

Celebrities and politicians may have the money to hire search engine optimization specialists to try to crowd the search results with positive content, but the need for online reputation repair and correction extends far beyond the monied few. SEOs will be sought out by friends and relatives in the hope that youthful indiscretions can be covered up or at least outranked in critical resume searches.

The other side of that coin is that SEOs may be sought out to help blow the whistle on someone, or to help harrass and ruin the life of someone who committed a crime, or to otherwise engage in reputation destruction. SEOs have the power to both harm and help, and the moral rationalists will argue for both actions.

Ultimately, we are each responsible for our own decisions and actions, but you have to wonder if Miley Cyrus’ family could have sat down with her and explained that taking revealing pictures of herself could be very embarrassing for a long, long time to come. If the kids don’t learn to set and respect boundaries, they will venture into the wild Internet and find they have preceded themselves in the worst way possible.

You don’t have to have committed murder or rape in order to be ostracized, victimized, and humiliated online. All you have to do is share one picture of yourself, or otherwise allow yourself to be compromised, at a time when you don’t think any harm will come of it. Today’s kids got no help from their parents. I suspect that, after another 5-10 years of the nonsense that has been sweeping across the Internet since the 1990s, the next generation of American children will be receiving some stern Internet Education advice from moms and dads who cannot undo the harm they did to themselves in their wild, carefree youth.

These may be the days to party, but the online scandals, humliations, and reputation implosions will only increase before they start to decrease.