Judging by an entirely unscientific polling of my parenting cohorts, I fall just about in the middle as far as what age I will allow the kids to have their own email address. They want it so badly, so very badly. Large, being the household guinea pig for all privlidges that come with age, was anxious, doomed to eternal nerdity among his peers (or so he thought) if he didn’t have an one, and despite the fact that we are of the last generation that can tell their kids, “When I was your age, I didn’t have email, and I didn’t die of deprivation in a lonely pool of my own frustration and burgeoning tween angst, so put that in your pipe and smoke it.”, he got one. He was 9.
We didn’t use an email platform designed for kids. We used Gmail. The spam filter is actually pretty darn good, which was concern number one. I didn’t want V14GR4 ads showing up in his email inbox. Having been around the internet block a few thousand times, we set up some conditions under which this account could exist. I think they are pretty good guidelines, so I’m sharing them here. Some are about safety online and some are just meant to keep a kid from being THAT KNUCKLEHEAD that you never want to obtain your email address for correspondence.
1. I will have your password and access to your email account 24/7, whenever and wherever they want. You will have zero privacy. None. Zilch.
2. I will have your email sent directly to my phone, so I will see not only every message you send, but every single piece of mail you receive. I can and will block particular senders (read as your friends) from being able to send you mail when they send things I don’t think are appropriate.
3. Your email address will not be your actual name, nor will your last name appear anywhere on your account. This is non-negotiable.
4. YOU WILL NOT FORWARD CHAIN MAILS OR STUPID JOKES.
5. If you break rule no.4, you will NEVER forward anything anywhere while including anyone else’s email address as a cc. Doing so is akin to providing a perfect stranger all your friends’ names and cell phone numbers, and it is a violation of their privacy and EXTREMELY LAME NETIQUETTE. Know how a bcc works if you MUST forward something.
6. If you persist in breaking rule no.4, do not ever forward any email sent to you from another person without their permission. That is another violation of their privacy and just plain rude.
7. You will not talk about any of your classmates in anything but extremely polite terms via email. EVER. You NEVER KNOW where your emails will end up. Don’t be that kind of tool.
8. Do not ever share your password, and do not ever click “remember me” when logging into your email from someone else’s computer. In fact, just don’t log into your email on anyone else’s system.
9. Do not sign up or register at any websites with your email address without my EXPRESS PERMISSION and SUPERVISION or your ASS IS GRASS.
10. Danger, there be dragons. Do not enter the realm of the SPAM folder. This one is actually managed better now, with the advent of the latest GMail tools release which allows you to hide entire folders from view. Monkey no see. Monkey no do.
Plenty of the kids’ friends and classmates have had email from a very early age, while some friends of Large *still* don’t have it. There is really no reason they need it, other than they will likely use it to communicate with other human beings for most of their life and their classmates is a good a place as any to practice. I’d rather they learn the ins and outs while I still have them under my thumb. Come to think of it, I think we probably all have some adults in our address book that would have been well served by having these sort of rules beaten into habits for them. You know what I’m talking about. Don’t play dumb.
ahem.
I know I’ve forgotten some of our rules. Feel free to add your own in the comments.
