Lo and behold, I recognized the face in the photo and it turns out the request had come from a child in my son’s class. My son’s 5th grade class. From an 11-year-old. An 11-year-old girl using a fake name on Facebook.

Perhaps this is not giving you pause, but it clearly gave me pause. And then I declined the request.

My pause was not about whether I should accept the request; it was about how this had happened, whether her mother knew it had happened, and how to have the conversations with the girl’s mother and with my kids.

I polled some other moms in the class and it turns out the girl had sent requests to several of us, including to the teacher, and we had all said no. One mom said she didn’t want an 11-year-old classmate of her daughter’s knowing her FB business, and that’s a valid.

The requesting child’s mother, when I questioned her about it all, didn’t seem the least bit worried or upset about it. Wasn’t raising any red flags for her.

Really? An 11-year-old using a fake name? On Facebook? Which has a policy limiting accounts to those 13 and older only (which, by the way seems a little young to me personally, but hey, it’s not my site). That flag is pretty crimson, IMO.

Lessons to be learned from this? I guess it’s about keeping open communication lines with my kids and with other moms in our community. And never say yes to a friend request without clicking on the profile. And that you never know what’s coming next in the 21st Century.

*For those of you old enough, and female enough, to remember Glamour magazine in the 70′s and 80′s, you may recall their Sticky Situation of the Month. It was my favorite feature of the magazine.

I was one of several Mom Bloggers recently invited by the producers of this documentary to view the program and sit down with the director Rachel Dretzin and correspondent Douglas Rushkoff. Over lunch we discussed what they had found while making the film and what our experiences were as moms with reasonably active digital lives.

Certainly security and privacy were concerns that came up in the show, especially for parents worried about how to navigate the internet with and for their kids. And while I personally have the occasional fears about terrible things that can happen to my children, I think they can just as easily happen in real life as online, so I don’t demonize the internet as much as some do.

The film also shows the power of the internet and wired culture to transform — everything from education to imagination to warfare. You already know I’m hooked: I blog, I text, I email, I tweet, I FB, I Whrrl. I am a plugged-in mom. I’ll probably be doing all of those things while I’m watching the show tomorrow night.

The show’s website is also loaded up with a workshop for parents and educators — videos and thought-provoking questions. It’s an amazing resource and I highly recommend checking it out.

Frontline: Digital Nation, February 2nd on PBS. Check local listings. (In LA, KCET will broadcast it beginning at 9pm.)