Jacki Labat knows she sounds like a broken record, but she doesn’t care.
The Atlanta mom to four teenagers uses every example she can to drill a message into their psyches.
“Everything leaves a path.”
Like many parents, Labat is concerned with privacy online and with smartphones -- two outlets that her blended family kids, ages 12-16, use as a lifeline.
“I tell them over and over again, you can get out of school, and something you’ve put online can haunt you forever. It can change the course of your whole life. [Facebook founder] Mark Zuckerberg can probably find people faster than the IRS,” Labat said.
To minimize the potential damage, Labat is vigilant. She monitors their Twitter and Facebook pages, maintains the passwords to any apps or game accounts they have and scrolls through their phones every night to peruse their texts.
“I always tell them, don’t put anything in text, email, chat or online that you wouldn’t want posted on a billboard on the side of I-285,” Labat said.
While her kids might not, at their current ages, appreciate their mother’s constant observation, it’s the type of attentiveness that experts believe is necessary.
"It's the Wild West for teens when it comes to privacy online," said Kathryn Montgomery, a privacy advocate and communications professor at American University in Washington.
The federal government has a history of regulating media to protect children under age 12: for instance, the 1998 children's Internet privacy law. And recent problems with Internet privacy and security -- such as the recent breach at Sony's online gaming network -- have led to renewed calls for regulations to protect consumers. Even the White House has called for Internet privacy rules.
But experts on adolescent development say youths between 13 and 18 deserve special attention. Reps. Edward Markey, D-Mass., and Joe Barton, R-Texas, said earlier this month that they are working on a bill to limit the collection of personal information about teens and prevent targeted marketing to them.
With few restraints, teens are creating digital records that also shape their reputations offline. All the status updates, tweets and check-ins to specific locations can be reviewed by prospective employers, insurance companies and colleges.
Web firms say sensitive data can be collected only with permission and that parents can set controls on phones and desktop computers to help keep teens out of the public eye.
Labat uses AT&T’s “Smart Limits” program, which specifies the number of monthly downloads of games on her kids’ phones, and also requires a four-digit passcode for the download -- a passcode only Labat and her husband possess.
A 2009 paper by neurobiologists and marketing experts at the University of California at Irvine reported that teens were more susceptible than adults to online advertising and take greater risks with their information online.
The part of the brain that makes planned and rational decisions doesn't fully develop until the 30s, according to the UC Irvine report, "Adolescents' Psychological and Neurobiological Development: Implications for Digital Marketing."
Hemu Nigam, a security expert and former chief privacy officer for Myspace, said that means companies should be making their privacy settings for teens tighter by default.
The new challenge in teen privacy involves mobile phones, which are used by six out of 10 teens. Nearly all of those users send text messages and exchange pictures, according to the Pew American Internet and Life Project. Three out of 10 teens access the Internet on smartphones.
Even young adults, such as 19-year-old McDonough resident Nehemiah Rolle, can inadvertently get hustled by aggressive online marketing.
Rolle is transferring from Baldwin-Wallace College in Ohio to a school in Georgia. He signed up on www.fastweb.com, a site dedicated to helping students find scholarships and loans, and suddenly began receiving unsolicited emails on his computer and iPhone from companies hawking computers, credit cards and dorm room accessories.
“All of these things were related to my college experience, but at the same time, they were really random things I didn’t want or need,” Rolle said.
He’s thankful he didn’t furnish the website with any personal information other than his email address and cellphone number.
“It’s definitely made me more cautious,” Rolle said.
Revelations that Apple and Google may have logged the locations of mobile users have brought new attention to Internet privacy from lawmakers, who questioned the two companies about their geo-locational collection at a hearing last week.
According to reports, both companies emphasized that their users have the ability to control the collection and use of location-related data gathered by their smartphones.
Foursquare and Gowalla, two popular location-based services, have built a business out of users broadcasting their locations online so that companies can push local coupons and retail suggestions. Both companies set 13 as the minimum age for users.
Foursquare co-founder Naveen Selvadurai said parental controls can help teens opt out of certain services. They don't track users' movements, and location is detected only by voluntary "check-ins," he said.
But he said the firm didn't consider special protections for teens.
"With a lot of these things," Selvadurai said, "we will figure things out as we go along."
The Washington Post contributed to this article.
