To wish there was a teensnet?

[Asinine]

Just heard Geraldine on 5 live about gransnet. I have thought for a while that a format like mumsnet would also work for teens. My DD is 12 and not on fb, she is wary because of potential for bullying and I am not letting her until she is 13 anyway. She knows I mumsnet and loves reading some of the threads. She would love to talk about music, books, school, TV, etc and to be able to do it anonymously would remove any potential for RL bullying. (she understands about online safety).

Do any of you have dcs who would be interested or would it just be too uncool?

my, 'very cool' dd, 13, thinks it would be a great idea.

it's called facebook

its called Tumblr

fb is so last year

I think there would be a much greater problem with confidentiality, though. At least we are grown women/men and take our own risks with what we divulge on a public forum. I don't think teenagers would be able to exercise enough discretion.

I am so uncool, have never heard of tumbir

The difference between fb and here is relative anonymity in RL although I agree with theweescowlyone that it would be even more important than on fb not to give out details where a child could be identified as this is a public forum

I suppose my worry would be that if teenager A posts something embarassing looking for help they may well get universally slaughtered by people trying to big themselves up iyswim.

It would work really well if you had enough dominanently nice personalities, but no so well if there were too many dominant judgememntal people.

Same as any forum I suppose!

But a teen posting on bullying, or issues about growing up, or parental addiction might get support from others, without risking RL repercussions. I would imagine there is the same spread of reasonable and nasty people in any age bracket.

I think it would be a good idea, but would have to be monitored heavily by adults. There are forums out there for teens, but they are full of txt speak and adults posing as teens, etc. I was on something similar to MN as a teenager but pretended I was in my 20's so I wouldn't be outed It gave me a chance to ask about bullying and sex and have reasonable, adult responses, not normal teen ones

Confused you make me feel old, there was nothing like this when I was a teen, mainly due to there being no computers unless you count the one commodore at school which only about two people knew how to use

...Or are you still a teen pretending to be older?

Haha, I'm not much older than a teen! I'm 22 :) Started using MN for nannying bits and got sucked in! I find it very helpful when I'm having a dilemma and when I'm having ishoos...

I don't remember what site I used when I was younger though, I just remember being fed up of the txtspk that was on the forums my friends frequented and being told I was bullied because I was sad/ugly/evil/nerdy/whatever-y :( And also being told that I should have sex at 14/15

It's weird, because I an young enough to have been online a lot as a teen. I've had an LJ since I was 13, but I veru speifically talked to people who I was interested in the same things as me, and almost all were older than me by a fair bit (but women also) and a few were the same age.

I ended up getting some great advice and support about all kinds of stuff, though not to the level of being able to ask anything the way you can on MN.

So I do totally see the appeal.

But the thing is there is no 'mutual interest' to tie it all together. The way there is with MN, or with the people I talked to as a teen.

Which is why I think you'd have more behaviour issues, because you don't have this binding reason to want to talk to the people who are there in that group already so there is less reason to want to like the other people on there, and be in turn, be reasonably nice to them even if you don't agree.

I had no idea how young you all are

The mutual interests could be raging hormones, parents, exams, relationships which nearly all teens go through