TED VIDEO: Juan Enriquez: Your online life, permanent as a tattoo

Our children are growing up in a digital world that is completely foreign to how we grew up. We didn’t have the Internet as a ubiquitous prescence in our lives. To make things worse, the landscape keeps changing on us, the parents, and the children. It is now, more than ever, crucial to teach our children how to be more than “street smart.”

It used to be that having street smarts was helpful, because that way you could protect yourself from being taken advantage of. It carries an element of shrewdness, for one’s own protection this is a good thing. Nowadays we need to apply that online.

This video is short, but it makes a powerful illustration. Juan Enriquez likens our online activity to an electronic tattoo, virtually permanent. Something we adults need to learn also, but moreover our children, as they grow up in the Internet jungle. And it is a jungle.