Mare Incognitum: Navigating the Online Seas
Our First Online Course is Ready to Sail
The Rundown↓
KNOW that tech giants, like sirens, entice us — often off course — making it difficult to navigate the online world.
REALIZE you’re not alone. Parents across the world are in the same boat. Let’s rally together and choose our own path.
EXPLORE our online course for families, Driver’s Training for Social Media, with four modules and a printable Course Companion .
When Elliot was born, the primary social media account we used with regularity was Facebook. We posted about his birth and savored all of the wonderful wishes and congratulations of friends and family who were too far away to visit in person. It was really special reading through all of their kind messages.
What we didn’t know then, is it was also the birth of Know Curtains.
I’m not going to pretend that I didn’t take a hundred pictures of him just in the first two days alone. I did. I couldn’t help it. I wanted to capture everything. Every sort of smile, and wide-eyed look of wonder.
And there, in just the first few days, the first few hours of Elliot’s birth, rose the question: how much of him do we share with the world and how much do we keep to ourselves?
We were brand new parents already facing a huge parenting question. One that could carry real repercussions. One that we hadn’t considered until that moment.
Matt and I were pretty modest users of social media at the time, but we had a good understanding of images living on forever, once caught up in the strands of the world wide web.
In those first few days, we navigated previously uncharted waters. Sure, we’d been on social, but we’re adults with our own built-in consent for whatever we post. Whatever we put of ourselves online, we were responsible for and lived with the consequences. With Elliot, we had to think of what he’d want out there FOREVER. Nothing stresses a parent out more than the fear that you’ll do irreparable damage to your child. Knowing that the internet never forgets made the waters even more treacherous.
The problem was, for nearly every other issue we faced — feedings, naps, sleeplessness — there were tons of articles to read about it. There was wisdom we could soak up from parents and friends who’d been through this before. There was a nautical star map made by those who had charted those waters before.
But social media? It was the wild west. The high seas. There was no star map to guide us. We were on our own, charting the map as we went.
Some people put nothing online. While others couldn’t seem to stop vomit-posting everything from the argument they had with their two-year-old to said two-year-old’s actual vomit. There were bath pics, butt pics, and a real sense that we were all walking through this blind.
What was too much?
We realized we were in uncharted waters, and the loudest voices at sea — the social giants — were telling us how much we needed to point our ship in their direction. They were and still are much like sirens, the enchantresses of old, beguiling sailors to change course, only to find themselves trapped. It was understandable watching fellow moms and dads overshare because they wanted everyone to adore their kid as much as they did, or to have us empathize with their four-year-old’s new sassy attitude, or commiserate when their child screamed all night and they began their workday on zero sleep. Social media, especially when you’re a new parent, cut off from the regular flow of social interaction you were used to, is an easy trap to slip into. A seductive siren. One whose primary objective is to ensnare you.
We were all afloat in this mare incognitum, trying to do our best, but this time without being able to ask our parents, “What did you do with social media when I was a kid?” Because it didn’t exist. Instead we found ourselves in a situation where we might worry about our grandparents online as much as we did our children.
We were dead reckoning, guessing and hoping that it would carry us to success. Here and there we’d find a guide — an article or two that we had to chase down, and was usually entirely too long to hold my interest, or too techy for me to understand. Instead, Matt and I used our primary filter when it came to navigating the online world — our own brains. We approached social media with our kids cautiously, slowly writing our own nautical map as we did. If only there was one place, with curated articles, where we could better understand the waters we were in, and thus have more stars to guide us.
It’s what led us to create Know Curtains, a place with updates regarding social media and the tech world and the wizards and machines behind them — how they work and potentially affect us all. We provided this out of our own need.
The cool thing about maps, is that they can guide us to a destination through many varying routes.
Now that our first online course, “Driver’s Training for Social Media” is complete, we’ve begun going through the videos and questions officially as a family.
We’re teaching Elliot (13) and Quinn (11) to read the maps. Elliot is proceeding as someone who wants to launch into the sea soon, while Quinn is still content in the harbor but curious about the journey ahead. They both get to see where the map can lead them — on paths both great and tragic. Homer, still at port, looking ahead to what might be.
The boys have already shown great insight, perceptive questions, and a healthy dose of bored impatience. We learned that Elliot’s appetite for it, along with his attention span, is a little greater than his brother’s, which is to be expected. Quinn just wants to play, not be bothered with the online world. Unfortunately, the online world is already interested in Quinn, so it’s necessary.
Quinn liked watching the first video and going through the questions. We tried to make it light where we could, cracking jokes and laughing at the ‘troll’ stock footage of the angry guy who steams up and snarls at the camera. For Quinn, that first video would have been a great place to stop. For Elliot, he could have watched another in addition to what he’d already seen.
You might have kids too young to watch with you, but it’s knowledge you’ll use in guiding them. The pace you go through this, as we’re finding with our own kids, is going to vary according to their personalities and ages. Once you sign up to access the course, we’ll email you a printable Course Companion to chart your own path.
But what we’ve found so far, is that the boys have each had good takeaways. And though they’re still docked in the harbor, the ocean waters are within sight, and we know they’ll be there sooner than we’d prefer. At least now they’ll have the star charts to navigate the seas and point their sails in good directions.
Postscript↓
Watch the free introduction and then upgrade to a Behind the Curtains subscription to access all of the modules for our online course. Once subscribed, we’ll email you a link to download our printable Course Companion for Driver’s Training for Social Media to navigate the online course solo or with your family.