I actually contemplated creating such a group because I am a total garden weenie and always post garden minutia that may be too much even for my "Close Friends" list that I post to. So I jokingly suggested one day that I needed a "Secret Garden Weenies" group, and many of my Friends actually said, "Yes, I want to join!" So how would I go about creating such a group, in other words, how could I create a group that was secret and all those in the group knew it was secret but no one else knew it existed? And how could I add new members? My Facebook page is not very private, it is an iteration of my public persona, and I often invite people I network with personally or professionally to "friend" me. I post certain things only to a "Close Friends" list I made, but that is not the same as a "secret" group.

I work with adolescents so I am forced to keep up with this stuff :-) My DS is 10, and I dread the day he gets involved with it all. Some things I have learned, FYI-- Icky, but good to know-- There are now several apps available that "capture" Snapchats. So the sender believes the message will disappear, but the recipient can save it and distribute it. This is frequently used for the sexy/naked images or supposedly private comments dumb kids send each other. There are apps specifically designed to deceive parents looking through their kids' phones. The icon on the phone will look like something innocent, like a calendar or whatever, but when you click on it, it takes you to a password protected messaging or "dating" service. Many of these apps are used by sexual predators; kids get suckered in by the "privacy" aspect. Sending/receiving nude pics of someone under 18 (even when a kid is sending images they have taken of themself) can result in charges of distributing child pornography. Seriously.

I think for this and everything, you should help them grapple with how much social media is designed to grab your attention with high impact, high conflict kinds of ideas. Even worse than TV considering how small the screen is of a phone, etc. I seriously don't think this is having a very good impact on people's lives, and I think children should be encouraged to limit their time on social media and live more of real life. I've been involved in social justice almost all my adult life, for me it is more than the meme of the day, and I would hope it would be so for my kids and the kids I mentor. Also hopefully you are living your values so your kids can work through this with you as you are coming to terms with it too. I grew up with race riots happening around me, this is nothing new but no less sad. I had my consciousness raised in the 1960's and what was on TV was awful then too. I still managed to come out of it with passion and hope and that was probably due to my parents encouraging me to reach out to people of different faiths and cultures, and to just be a nice person, period. I was trained to be a "mensch" by my grandparents, which meant to be a nice kind person, despite what was going on around me. The world is full of mensches too, kids need to be made aware of that. All that negative drama is very toxic, I would work pretty hard to keep it out of my home. I know SO and I have to work at it, to not become angry and jaded.

People have more discretionary income than they once did. When my parents and when I was looking at houses, one took what one got and made the best of it. I knew some pretty wealthy people and I can only remember one friend from when we lived in LA (she lived way up the hill in Beverly Hills) who remodeled her kitchen, and a friend in St Louis who had the world's smallest kitchen, 3 children and entertained and cooked nearly every single weekend. People just didn't spend money on such thing! They MADE them work! Now, a 5 year old kitchen in Darien CT is considered a "total gut job". I redid my kitchen of 32 years last year. Was it useable? Yes! Had I made it attractive? Yes? Could it be improved? Absolutely yes! And a new kitchen was on my bucket list, which at then age 72, seemed to have some "time relevance"! I have NO REGRETS! Moving my refrigerator made an enormous difference both in the function of the kitchen and in its appearance. When the main entrance into the kitchen feels "cramped" (because it IS cramped!", then that colors one's impression of the entire kitchen which was NOT cramped at all! Now, the kitchen appears quite spacious for an 11 x 15 ft kitchen! It has tons of counter space, good separation of work areas for multiple cooks, and the replacement of bottom cabinets with big drawers was worth doing even if everything else had worked perfectly. But redoing my kitchen was far from a "necessity". It was a luxury to which I treated myself and I have no regrets. I think at my age, I "earned" it by living for so many years with multiple kitchens that were anything but ideal. But even in them, I cooked fabulous meals and I never was beside myself every single time I went into my kitchen. It's all a mindset today.