My younger two kids have attended a summer camp for a couple of weeks. The camp is affiliated with the university and the counselors are students.

What I find really disturbing is that the counselors don’t go by their names, but rather by pseudonyms. For instance, assume that all counselors have the names of green vegetables, so one would go by Kale, another by Broccoli, a third would be Spinach, etc.

So my kids come back home with stories like, “Today, Kale did this and then Spinach said that.”

I leave my kids there all day. How are the kids supposed to trust these counselors if they can’t know the counselors’ names?

Yesterday, I asked the two counselors who were there at checkout time about the pseudonym weirdness, and they said it’s for their (the counselors’) protection, so the kids wouldn’t be able to find them on social media.

What?

According to the counselor, many camps do it (?!). There are camps with teen campers, who then find the counselors on social media and then… I don’t know what. Send friend requests? Annoy counselors? I don’t know what exactly happens, but the counselors feel it’s inappropriate that the kids are able to contact them on social media, so they all have pseudonyms. The “green vegetable” theme (not really, but there is a common theme) was suggested by the camp director, who’s not a student counselor but an adult staff member of the university.

Let me get this straight. You are using a pseudonym in real life in order to protect your real name for the purpose of safely using the real name in social media? How is that not twisted and totally backwards? Shouldn’t the real name be protected for safe use in real life? Since when is partaking in social media mandatory?

And since when are adults (young adults, but adults nonetheless) supposed to be afraid of and protected from the children — children!!! — in their care?

This is fucked up.