Failure to Communicate: Profile Facts

Today in my fifth grade class, I tried to help them grapple with the realities of truth and fiction on online profiles. We sat in a circle and discussed, in an open ended fashion, whether or not you should use facts that are real or facts that are fake. In the end, the class was victim to my own teaching! It turns out that they really believed me back in second grade, third grade, etc. that they are never to share their real name, their birth dates, their addresses and their sports team names. However, they somehow generalized that to believe you should never share anything real about yourself. I can't help but feel I have failed them. Part of it is that there is no clear answer. I think they got the message that people do lie on their profiles in order to make themselves look better. They also got the message that some information is unsafe to share. But I'm not sure if I didn't teach them all it's okay to lie online. Oh my goodness, what have I done? I better work on this.

Image used with permission from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/digitalpotato/2714653723/