FMTYEWTK

Ok, I'll admit it. I'm a newcomer to the cyber-universe and it's moving at such a pace, I struggle to keep up. I mastered my MySpace just in time for Facebook to become the place where cool cyber-beings hang. Now I'm trying even trying to Tweet.

But what really has me flummoxed is the use of cyber-shortcuts--acronymns that have me scratching my head. Of course, once I figure them out, they make so much sense and my daughter thinks I'm cool when I IM (instant message) her. She was quite proud of how tech-saavy I'm becoming when I ended our conversation with TTYS (Talk to you soon). When I used it with my DH(dear husband), he thought it meant "Ta-Ta, You Stud!" Guess I won't try to tell him different.

Then there's LOL(laugh out loud), ROFL(rolling on floor laughing), and the more graphic ROFLMAO(rolling on floor laughing my a** off) and two of my daughter's favs, IDK (I don't know) and KWIM (Know what I mean?).

In fact, there's a whole secret universe of acronymns out there. And a good many of them are used by teenagers to keep their parents clueless.

Now, that's ok. I understand that parents suffer from IQ deprivation until their kids turn 21 and a little rebellion is good for self-actualization and all. But the internet can be a dangerous place.

So when I was researching this post and ran into a site that taught teens how to signal when their parents were watching or that the coast was clear, or ways to ask for nude pics of each other or to give their age/sex/and LOCATION(!), I started to think acronymns stink. Who needs shortcuts to disaster?

I know some people think there's a disconnect here. I write pretty hot romance, but I write for adults. I'm not in favor of underage sex. I remember being totally flumoxed when I was taking some grad school courses a few years ago with a bunch of middle school teachers and I couldn't get them to agree that it was A GOOD THING FOR MIDDLE SCHOOLERS NOT TO HAVE SEX! They didn't want to impose their values on the kids.

Excuse me. We impose our values on them all the time. And we should. You wouldn't let your kid play with a lit stick of dynamite. Why feel you can't tell them to wait for something as emotionally, physically, and spiritually explosive as sex?

And don't get me started on how easy texting, sexting and the rest of the internet have made life easier for pedophiles. It's all FMTYEWTK (Far More Than You Ever Wanted To Know).

Wow, I didn't set out to make this a rant. Sorry. But protecting young people is something I feel passionate about. I had intended to ask you to share your favorite internet acronymns. Now I just want to know if you think I'm crazy. I'm glad my kids are grown. If yours aren't, how do you protect them from too much, too soon?