Ready Kids › First Screens › Badge 2 › Lesson 2.1
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People are not their profile
Tell the difference between what a profile shows and what it proves.
1Look
Two profiles, one kitchen table
Same hand, two phones
Two phones side by side on a kitchen table. One profile: a twelve-year-old girl, football, cats. The other: a forty-year-old man, motorbikes. The same hand is holding both.
Both of these took about four minutes to make. Same person, same table, same afternoon.
2The idea
Anyone can type anything
A profile is a form. Somebody filled it in. The photo came from somewhere, the age is a number they typed, the school is a word they typed, and the bio is whatever they felt like. Nobody checked any of it. Nobody ever does. A profile shows what somebody wants you to think. That is all it can do.
This is not about suspecting everyone. Most profiles are roughly honest. It is about knowing which bits are actually known and which bits are just typed, so you do not treat a typed thing as a fact and plan your Saturday around it.
3The idea
Two piles: known and typed
Take any profile and sort every line into two piles. For each line ask one thing: could I check this myself, today, without asking them? If yes, it goes in the known pile. If the only way to check is to take their word for it, it is typed.
The known pile is always tiny.
Known: somebody made this account.
Known: they chose to contact you.
Typed: the name, the age, the school, the photo, the town, the friends they say they have.
That is not a trick of the exercise. It is just how profiles work.
4The idea
One profile, sorted
Here is a profile. Jake, 11. Riverside School. Football and drawing. Photo of a kid in a football kit. Eighteen followers. He has just followed you and sent a wave.
Sort it. Jake: typed. 11: typed. Riverside School: typed, and it is the school across town, so you cannot walk over and look. The photo: typed, because a photo of a kid is easy to find and easy to use. Football and drawing: typed. Known: an account exists, and it contacted you. Two things. Everything else is a story so far.
5Your turn
Four profiles, what can you actually check?
Known or typed
Four profiles, one at a time. Drag each line into a pile: known, or typed. The game shows the right pile after each one and says why. Most lines land in typed, and the known pile never has more than two things in it.
The name goes in typed. So does the age. So does the photo. So, usually, does everything.
6Decide
A new follower says they go to the school across town and know your cousin. Photo, name, twelve followers. What do you actually know?
Pick one to carry on.
7The idea
What met means
There is one way to move a whole profile into the known pile at once: meet them. Met means you have been in the same room. Not video-called, not watched their story every day for a year, not talked to every night since September. Same room.
Everyone else is a profile, however long you have talked and however well you feel you know them. That is not an insult to them. It is just what you have got. A real friend online is still a set of typed lines until the day you meet.
8Find them
Which of these can a profile actually prove?
Tap the ones that count.
Find all 2. Yes, only 2.
9Do it
Before you leave this page
Open your contacts or followers. Count how many of them you have met in the same room. Say both numbers out loud: how many contacts, how many met. Notice the gap.
Tick it when you have done it.
Lesson done.
A profile is a claim. You have met nobody until you have met them.
Next lesson: The friend of a friend nobody has met