Lil' Techies

Tori Spelling (actress, reality TV star) has opened a Twitter account for her 3-year old. She is actually getting a lot of grief for this, possibly because she has made it available to the public (and the fact that he is not actually writing the tweets, but they are written in his name).

I think it’s a great idea–kids are so funny at that age and documenting their cuteness never hurt anyone! Beyond that, I started to think of how Twitter could be useful for older children in a controlled and parent-monitored environment.

• An account for kids would have to be kept “private”.
• The email address given to Twitter would have to be a parent’s address so that “follow” requests could be monitored.
• If grandma, grandpa, mom or dad are also using Twitter, the followers could be limited to these people.
• To keep the child’s interest, followers would need to be supportive, such as responding to their tweets and writing directly to the child.

Possible Concerns

• The trending topics might not always be age-appropriate
• Spammers could still @ your child’s account
• Hackers