What would your daughter do to meet Justin Bieber? Mika Brzezinski’s twelve year old daughter, Carly, hacked her mother’s Twitter account to do just that.
Brzezinski is one of the hosts of the MSNBC program “Morning Joe.” She has 20,000 plus Twitter followers. She surprised them recently with a tweeted request “Can anyone help my daughter meet Justin Bieber.” It seemed like an odd post, but at least one follower, NBC White House Correspondent Savannah Guthrie, retweeted the post.
Of course, the reason it seemed like an odd thing for Brzezinski to do was that it wasn’t Brzezinski tweeting at all. It was Carly. Brzezinski writes about the incident in her essay, “Internet Intervention” for the September issue of “Ladies Home Journal.” Brzezinski, naturally, was mortified when she discovered what her child had done.
When it was later revealed that Carly had also started an illicit Facebook page (which kids aren’t allowed to do until they turn 13) Brzezinski and her husband created a family contract regarding internet use that lays out very specific rules. These rules include never going on the web without a parents specific permission and make it clear that their internet use histories can and will be checked at any time.
Keeping kids off the internet is pretty much impossible, so “contracts” like Brzezinski’s are a great idea. This not only lays down the rules in black and white, it helps kids really understand the amount of responsibility that comes with being allowed to be on the web on their own. Adding provisions about how they are to deal with bullying or any suspicious activity they might encounter are also a great way to help reinforce how you want your kids to deal with internet dangers.
