Who is this Anna Creamer?

Do your kids have a friend named Anna Creamer?

This Anna Creamer has a lot of Facebook friends: 1233, down from 3k, since Creamer appears to be a fraud.  I would never guess from the profile of a cute little kid, in beauty pageant attire.

Hundreds of Anna Creamer’s friends go to the same high schools and colleges as our kids.  I’ll admit I didn’t know anything about the mystery until I read The Ravine, a high school magazine.   Where the student journalist found she was friends with hundreds of kids in their school, and nobody actually knew her.

The article uncovered the fiction of Anna Creamer yet, failed to share the lessons learned.  I hope the readers are thinking about the ramifications of being friends with someone they don’t really know.  Clearly 1233 high school and college students are not.

The general hope of Facebook is that you are who you say you are.  In marketing ethics, it’s often referred to as “genuine communication”.  In life, it’s simply wrong to tell a lie.  But not everyone knows [or cares] about those rules.

That little beauty queen, Anna Creamer, is faking friendships to get to your kids.  I don’t know why.  There’s no way to find out who’s behind the “Anna” façade.  She links her friends to a junk website, which links to another junk website which has some explicit photos.

Not everyone faking their identity is “evil”.  A San Francisco court case recently revealed that FBI agents are posing on Facebook.  And they weren’t there to protect your kids from Facebook predators, they’re spying.

Just don’t be friends with people you don’t know.  Personally.  And have met in person.   Your digital life is part of your whole life.

Digital life doesn’t exist in a vacuum; it intersects with analog life.  Coach that what they do digitally should fit into life as a whole.

Friends are people we are attached to another through feelings of affection or regard.  If you haven’t really met them, there is no real affection!  A friend is someone with shared experiences, similar interests or similar goals.   If you know their interests [Not Ohio State; what about Ohio State], you are not friends, no matter what category Facebook puts it in.

Everyone else is a stranger.  A stranger can be watching their conversations, accessing their pictures and personal information, gathering cell phone numbers.

I don’t know what the endgame is; it could be just a childish prank.  But the potential for danger is there.   Some of this may seem like a no-brainer to you.  But you are the young person’s guide through social development.

Talk to your kids about their friends and how they know them; what they know about them.  Take an interest. Encourage them to weed out/purge the peripheral friends.

Your kids may have become friends with faux Anna unwittingly.   Facebook privacy controls do a lot but do not allow you to block your friends list.  When someone starts a facebook account the algorithms of the network immediately start searching for friends.  Newbies want to have a lot of friends.

It didn’t take fake Anna long to gather friends.  Many admit to accepting fake Anna’s friend request because they had mutual friends.  AND her profile says she goes to ‘Ohio State”, the largest on-campus college population in the country.  What are the odds she would have a mutual friend or two that accepted without asking questions?

Coach your kids on the questions they should ask to know their friends better; to figure out if they are really mutual friends.

First she got friends, now she’s gathering their cell phone numbers.

Fake Anna has joined 4 groups which were created by people who lost their cell phones and are trying to recreate their phone list.  Here’s how it works: they set up a ‘group’ and type in the profile that they lost their cell phone and need people to give their phone number.  When a group is set up, facebook asks if you want to invite your friends to join.  The person trying to recreate their phone numbers invites ALL their friends to join.  It’s smart, it’s efficient but it can be dangerous.

First, there’s an option to make the group ‘public’, where anyone can join; ‘private’ where only people who approve can join; ‘secret’ where only people you invite can join and it is NOT searchable.

If you lose your phone number and set up a group to recover numbers, make it a secret group and only invite people they really know/call.

When I want someone’s cell phone number, I send them a facebook message and have them email it to me.  Email is still one-on-one [except possibly gmail].

We have to keep in mind when talking to our kids that young people think social networking is their space.  There’s an article in that same issue of The Ravine Which takes that position.  They are wrong.   People WAY older than them invented it and they are not generally advancing the use of it.  But their point of view is just that they want privacy on Facebook.  Sounds silly by our standards.  Here are some guidelines when interacting with your chil[ren] on facebook to balance their need for their own space and our need to make sure they are safe.

• Your own kid shouldn’t have anything on his facebook page that would embarrass them in front of their mother — a good litmus test for life.
• Don’t ‘friend’ other kids.  If they invite you, you can ‘accept’.
• Just because facebook calls them a ‘friend’, they are NOT your friend.  They are your child’s friend.  Act a bit more conservatively than your instincts for acceptable behavior dictate.  Online it is difficult to see facial signals and hear voice inflection.  There is room for misinterpretation.  Also, I have likened it to the school dance of yesteryear.  Okay for parents to be chaperone but asking kids to dance is just plain creepy.
• No posting on their wall.
• No commenting on the posts that other people make on their wall.
• Set a good example because your information, pictures & posts may show up on their feed.
• Be there as an observer to understand and support your child[ren], if needed.
• If something concerns you: stop, consider, discuss in person.

Start by finding out if this Anna Creamer is their ‘friend’ and what they really know about her.