PLOS, G2G! - Do You Know What Your Kids Are Saying Online?

Hi everyone! So, I was browsing on my Facebook newsfeed the other night, scrolling through endless status updates about “I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here!” and came across a post from a younger relative of mine saying she thought somebody on the show was “peng” (no it wasn't Willie Carson! Haha). I think this picture of the conversation will explain what happened next...”S” is my younger relative, and “R” is my brother that lives in Germany – the reason why I say that will make sense when you read it. Oh and I'm still “Liz”!

I briefly touched upon this subject in one of my previous posts (link here), where I mentioned a new “language” kids use online today. From time to time, slang words will come back in fashion (even though they'll think they're new) and other times, like “peng” they'll make them up. This can be extremely infuriating when you're talking to a younger person and you haven't got a clue what they're wittering on about. The website Urban Dictionary (http://www.urbandictionary.com) keeps a current record of slang words and can often include acronyms too. Users rate descriptions of words up or down depending on how relevant they are at the time. As of October 2011, the website had over 6 million definitions and it's still rising, so it's worth a quick browse at the least!

Another way people (mainly kids and teens) communicate online is with the use of acronyms. To try and learn all the different ones would be pointless but here is a list of the top 15 terms for parents to watch out for if they have kids using the internet.

1. AITR = Adult In The Room
2. P911 = Parent Emergency
3. PAW = Parents Are Watching
4. PIR = Parent In Room
5. POS = Parent Over Shoulder
6. PLOS = Parents Looking Over shoulder
7. PRW = Parents Are Watching
8. MOS = Mom/Mam/Mum Over Shoulder
9. MIRL = Meet In Real Life
10. S2R = Send To Receive (pictures)
11. LMIRL = (Lets) Meet In Real Life
12. CD9 = Code 9 - (means parents are around)
13. E or X = Ecstasy (the drug)
14. ASL(R P) = Age Sex Location (Race / Picture)
15. TDTM = Talk Dirty To Me

If you happen to notice your kids using any of the above terms online, if you are able to, it would be a good idea to check their chat history as sometimes, kids could tell you that the acronyms they're using will mean other things, for example, PAW (Parents Are Watching) could also mean “People Are Weird” or something else, so if you notice in their chat history that after the mention of the word “PAW” the conversation suddenly changes then it's likely they were talking or looking at something they shouldn't have.

I hope this quick post has provided some good info for you if you didn't already know these things. I'm going to try and get back to looking at more kids sites soon so if anyone has any suggestions then let me know!

Thank You

@Lizmundo

The Ramblings Of Lizmundo - Office Plants, Jingles And More Kids Sites!

Hello again, take a seat and I shall tell you what has been happening in the world of Lizmundo. Well, last week was pretty eventful, Thursday I had the wonderful experience of one of my bosses singing a jingle to me. We've been trying to think of jingles to use on GBK radio which is a lot harder than you might think. So here is what I had to listen to: (you need to read the next bit with the jungle book tune in mind) "I'm the king of the sign ups, Yeah! the Cyber VIP, I spend my days monitoring the site and that makes me happy, keeping kids safe on GBK is what I'm here to do, I check their face by webcam, so I know who is who.........doo..be...doo I want to verify you whoo whoo, I want to check and see, who you be, it's freee eee............" I best not make comment on my boss's efforts, incase he reads this, but I'm going to try and get my creative juices going and think of a better one, but it's hard, especially when you keep thinking about other company's jingles in the process! Like this one for a skip company "Just call A Lewis Skip Hire, skip skip skip hooray, just skip the rest and try the best, and call us up today!". It has definitely been fun though, even if my boss a little cringe worthy :-)

Said boss has also given me a peace lily. I haven't named it yet.

The pretty addition to my desk

As you can see, it's very pretty but I am concerned that I'll accidently kill it. I'm hopeless with plants. I always buy them with the best intentions but they never last, just ask my venus fly trap! Hopefully it'll be different on this occasion and I might be like this with it:

Simon Pegg in Hot Fuzz with his Peace Lily

I've been feeling quite old, and learning that kids don't just use acronyms like “LOL” (laugh out loud) anymore like I used to when I was younger. I've been keeping an eye on the blogs published on our website, which is one of the features that seems to be quite popular amongst the members. They blog about typical kid things you'd expect – boys, girls, football and Justin Bieber (One Direction are also really popular), but they also use a language I'm not familiar with - mostly acronyms. One member has talked about her “BBFAL” on her blog. Now I know that “BFF” stands for Best Friends Forever, but BFFAL??? Luckily, on this occasion she's included what her acronym stood for (it stands for Best Friends Forever And Life just incase you were wondering). Normally I have to search our list we keep for these sorts of things but i have to add to it by searching online as they seem to make new ones up all the time! I have to check they're not outsmarting us! I could list a huge amount of acronyms for you to refer to but they'd only make new ones up again!

Phoebe (not her real name) has also named some other site she uses in her blog – Quizzaz. I had never heard of this before in my life so I had to Google this too!

Quizzaz as the name suggests, (well, after you see the website, it's head slappingly obvious what it is) is a website where members can create quizzes for anyone to answer. I came across one which was titled:

“Don't take this quiz or you'll be scared”. So I clicked on it.

Question one:

“why didn't you listen!!!!!!”

• Because my mommy told me I could
• I like fear
• Because I LOVE your quizzes
• Because I'm ugly – hmmmm....

Question three:

“What's your fear?”

• The Dark
• Gay People – charming!
• *is off*
• NOTHING

After you click through the answers, the quiz will give you a result. Mine was “Gustav Shafer -
It's Ok But You Should Be Scared Anyway”.

I don't know what this means. I don't even know who Gustav Shafer is, anyway, there are lots of other quizzes on there, most of them contain swearing and other subjects which can in-bed themselves inside childrens' minds, things that they shouldn't need to worry about. For example, another quiz was titled - “what weight are you?”, the results would tell you if you were super skinny, skinny, perfect, quite fat or obese.

These quizzes are created by the members of the website so could potentially contain anything, and it doesn't seem as though these quizzes are checked to see if they're appropriate for their audiences before they are posted on the site. I joined the website to see what sort of filters they use but there were no restrictions on age to join and there weren’t any visible guidelines as to what you could/couldn't post.

What sort of message is this sending to the youth of today? That you should be scared of gay people? and you will be called fat based upon your answers to a quiz? Lovely :-(

So, that's my thoughts on Quizzaz anyway, and what I've been up to lately. I hope you also have a good week too. I will be looking into more websites this week and I will share with you what i find out.

As you can tell, I'm a bit disconnected with today's kids so I want to try and stay in the loop!

Mumsnet soon, they have a good filter in place to check bloggers before they get posted, so fingers crossed they'll like my posts!

Thanks for reading, be back soon!

@Lizmundo

Social Networking Sites - What Makes Them So Appealing?

Hi there! Monday again and the start of another new week. I caught the bus into work again this morning and due to the driver's erratic driving skills, we almost crashed. Twice. However I arrived at work in one piece.

I logged into my homepage this morning and I noticed that there had been quite a few signups over the weekend, quite a few have also been verified too. One was even verified through webcam on Skype! We are averaging at around 4 – 5000 page views a day now so the word of greatbritishkids.com must be catching on (I'm just glad it's not “the bird” anymore). Hooray!

I've been looking at some news articles over the last few days and found this one from the Daily Mail which is pretty alarming: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2056913/A-million-British-13s-use-Facebook-day.html?ito=feeds-newsxml .

For anyone that's reading this that thought “I'm not clicking that link, it's a long, boring news article!” It basically says that there are a million under 13s in Britain that uses facebook everyday. That's one in four pre-teens accessing it every single day. One user, lunepremiere from London has commented on the article and said “Notice they said a million use at least daily.. so yes, the real figure is probably higher!”. This statement is more than likely very true as most parents probably don't even realise that their child has signed up to the service.

So what makes sites such as facebook so appealing to these preteens?

Shy people like myself (although I'm not as bad now as I used to be), can bring out their extrovert personalities online e.g. by creating a blog or a page about their interests. They might speak to people from their school online that they would never have the courage to approach in real life for whatever reason. They don't have to be so afraid of being themselves as they can also go in search of other people on the internet for people with the same interests and problems as them.

The problem is, it's who they end up speaking to is the real issue. Just as it's easy for someone to reveal their true personality online, it's just as easy for someone else to hide theirs, and trick a vulnerable person into thinking that they are someone they can talk to.

There is no way of checking people's real identities on facebook, and just to prove a point, my dog even has an account! She has 42 friends and constantly gets new requests from strangers, even children sometimes. Although she has never accepted strangers onto her account, you can get my meaning of how easy it can be to get into contact with the wrong people. If you have a picture of a cute cuddly dog, people will want to speak to you and be your friend. Go figure! 

It is up to everyone to try and promote other alternative websites for pretreens and young teens to visit. Obviously I'd prefer it if they checked out greatbritishkids.com as I know from first hand experience how safe it is, but as long as they are kept safe is the main priority.

Thanks for coming back to read my posts!

@Lizmundo