A Life Lesson in a Social Media Experiment

Ok, so you have told your kids, repeatedly, that everything that they put online is fair game and that anyone could get their information and use it. You’ve also talked endlessly about shutting off the location info on their phones and other devices – but to little or no avail. Well, perhaps a little YouTube video will do the trick. See how Comedian Jack Vale uses geo-tagged social content to identify nearby strangers and learn as much information as possible about them, and then uses that info to approach people and "guess" their names, occupations, birthdays, and other personal information. Ask your kids to also look at the people’s reactions – at first they act a bit taken aback, but then, no one really thinks the joke is that funny -- because it’s not. It’s downright scary and a bit creepy.