Wednesday, June 6, 2012

The Post of Shame...



In the past decades, punishment of children has received some major overhauls. Parents are afraid to spank, replacing it with timeouts. Groundings take place in a bedroom, usually with a cable TV, computer, cell phone, and radio. What is an appropriate punishment for children of the information age?

A few months ago, father Tommy Jordan took to YouTube to refute his daughter's rant on Facebook about how bad of a parent he was.


How did he find his daughter's rant? WHILE UPGRADING HER LAPTOP PER HER REQUEST. See, Mr. Jordan is an IT guy....which means he works with computers everyday. So, posting a rant about your overbearing dad on a website that he probably knows your password to, and if he doesn't, I'm sure he could have found it....probably isn't the best idea. It's the equivalent of a cop's kid ripping off a bank, or one of the Kardashians going to someone besides their mom to release their latest sex tape. It's going to end badly.

Enter the newest parent into the social media punishment ring. ReShonda Tate Billingsley, an author and journalist. ReShonda's daughter decided to do something stupid on Facebook.




She apparently decided to post pictures of her drinking alcohol with friends, or her dumbass friends decided to tag her in pictures where she was drinking alcohol because they're idiots. In any case, her mom (probably on her friends list) caught wind of it, and made her upload this pic before locking down her account.

BRILLIANT.

Social humiliation is quickly becoming a viable option for parents to punish their children. Because children spend so much time texting, IM-ing, and on Facebook and Twitter, why not destroy the images they've built in these arenas? It's no secret that the internet is a curtain to hide your imperfections. Everyone does it to an extent. When those facades come crashing down around you, it can serve to remind you of yourself. Kids need some of that every now and then.

2 comments:

  1. This is the social equivalent of making your kid go back to the store where they stole the candy, and confess and pay/return to the owner.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yes, but instead of getting embarrassed in front of an adult, they are embarrassed in front of a large group of their peers, which, I believe, is a stronger deterrent than one or two adults.

    ReplyDelete