iParent: A Crash Course in Social Media, Part 1

For part 1 of a Thursday series on social media, I've made a quiz. Have fun! I should warn you that if you look up the answers and cheat, then something terrible will probably happen to you, just like the time you didn't forward that chain email letter to 10 people. Oh wait. Nothing happened then, did it. Okay, well, do whatever you want. Just don't tell me your score if you cheated, you cheater. If youre not on your phone, hit that start button and you should be good to go. If you're on your phone, you'll probably have to skip to the printed version down below.

If you were able to do the quiz, you can skip this next part and scroll on down to the bottom few paragraphs now. If you're trying to do this on your phone, I don't think it will let you. So here are the questions in a far less exciting format. You can find the answers at the very bottom of the page.
1. According to the privacy policies of Facebook, how old must you be to register an account? A. 10 B. 12 C. 13. D. 16
2. What's an avi?   A. someone who tries to get your personal information online   B. a picture used for your profile, short for "avatar"   C. a voice text app   D. the person whose job it is to monitor a social media site
3.  The majority of people talk to people online more than they do in real life. true/false
4. The most followed person on Twitter is 
A. Lady Gaga  B. Barack Obama  C. Joyce Meyer  D. Justin Bieber
5. Users on YouTube spend a total of _______ hours per month   
A. 2.9 billion B. 500 million C. 100 million D. 1 million
6. More than 5 million photos are uploaded on Instagram every 
A. day B. week C. month D. year
7. The fastest social media site to reach 100 million users was 
A. Twitter B. Facebook C. Instagram D. LinkedIn
8. Which of the following is not a popular social media site among teenagers? 
A. Formspring B. Tumblr C. Snapchat D. LinkedIn
9. A "selfie" is    A. another name for a profile picture    B. an emotionally-charged status or tweet   C. a picture taken of yourself, often in the bathroom mirror   D. When someone "likes" his or her own status post
10. Snapchat   A. is used to send pics that “self-destruct” in 10 seconds   B. users often take screenshots of photos before they disappear   C. is a popular app for sexting   D. all of the above for this app, now 4th in iTunes store.

Since we’re the first generation to have social media as a part of our lives, we're the guinea pigs. As parents, we don't have anyone who has gone before us to teach us how to help our kids use their phones and social media wisely. Nope, we're the ones that future parents will learn from. And so far, as a whole, we're not doing so hot.

Here's the deal: the fact is that social media is a huge part of our lives and will continue to be. We can pretend it will go away, but it won't. And kids are no worse than we were when we were growing up; it’s just that social media and cell phones means that their mess ups can potentially be put on display for the whole world to see. That means that some of the consequences for messing up are much greater. It also means, that since they're putting their emotions, photos, thoughts, and relationships out there on the world wide web, we parents have very little excuse to not know what’s going on.

It's time we wake up.

Next Thursday: Part 2 - Teenagers were asked, "What's one thing your parents don't know about your use of social media?" I'll share their answers.


quiz answers: 1. C 2. B 3. true 4. D (just recently passed Gaga) 5. A 6. A 7. C 8. D 9. C 10. D