Facebook for the under-13s, eh? That’s what Mark Zuckerberg wants. With two-year-olds using iPads, we clearly need online social networks for kids right down to kindergarten age. But please, dear God, not those bastards!
There’s two threads to unravel here. One is whether children under 13 should be interacting online. The other is whether Facebook can be trusted to provide the venue.
On the first point I’ll be blunt. If you reckon under-13s shouldn’t be interacting online, then you’re an idiot. What you’re really saying is that you want to destroy our children’s ability to cope with life. The important factor isn’t the online bit, it’s the interaction.
Humans are social animals. Some of the most important lessons children need to learn are about how to interact with others, how to co-operate, and where the boundaries of acceptable behaviour lie. The online realm is a fact of our existence now. Do you really want to delay these basic life lessons until kids are 13?
Kids really do need to learn the nuances of online communication from an early an age as possible.
Zuckerberg’s little suggestion has of course triggered a wave of screechy moral panic. “There’s obviously lots of opportunities there for kids to be bullied and all sorts of things,” said Carmel Nash, director of the Parents and Friends Federation Queensland. “Who are they going to be friends with on there?”
Goodness me! Not just bullying, but “all sorts of things”.
Nash is right. Before Facebook, there was never the opportunity for kids to pick on younger kids, sneak up behind them in the locker room, punch them and call them names and then, when they respond in kind, grab them and throw their head against a locker door where it strikes the sharp metal edge, the excruciating pain, the blood everywhere, surrounded by laughter, the tears, the sudden sheer terror that you might be dying …
Sorry, just reminiscing about the happy primary school days we all had before the internet ruined everything. Where was I?
Oh yeah. Kids interacting with kids. They do that, you know. And you know how we deal with that? How we’ve always dealt with that? Responsible. Adult. Supervision.
Supervision, I said. Not control. Not constant monitoring. Kids need their own space in order to grow and learn. On the primary school playground kids can have conversations with each other metres, sometimes tens of metres away from any eavesdropping adults. They should be able to do the same online.
The screechy fear-merchants need to get a grip. The online world is safer than the physical world. Not only is the risk of physical harm removed, everything that happens can be logged. We already have software tools that can monitor online conversations for signs of bullying and other suspicious activity, should parents be too lazy to develop a proper relationship with their offspring.
There is no problem here. The problem is Facebook.
The second point is that Facebook’s entire business model is about you revealing as much personal information as possible, which they can turn into a product for advertisers. They try to get you to open up your privacy settings using what I consider to be unethical tricks.
It’s almost a year since Quit Facebook Day protested against this behaviour. Nothing has changed since then.
Oh God – that’s all we need. Instead of little kids running around and getting the occasional bruise or blood nose we need to get them online otherwise we’ll “destroy our children’s ability to cope with life”. Unfortunately little kids are generally trusting, but most learn through the rough & tumble of face-to-face relationships how to protect and develop themselves. I’d suggest pre-teens would be better served learning how to interact with the physical world, and then moving into the online world when they understand to treat with sceptisism anything they read or see online.
It all assumes that kids aren’t ignoring the ‘i am 13 years of age or over’ checkbox. What’s to stop them? The same thing that stops us from not using an assumed name? ROFL.
I wrap my child in bubblewrap before she leaves the house. I have done the same with her laptop. Can’t be too careful. Just to make sure I paint her bubblewrap green and make her crawl to school in case she trips, unfortunately she often gets mistaken for the Wirrn larvae from Doctor Who. What to do?
As a mother of a 9 year old I would have to say children are interacting online already. Certainly some do have facebook accounts and those that don’t, interact through more age appropriate forums such as Club Penguin, Everloop, etc. There are plenty of options without the help of Zuckerberg and children are perfectly capable of finding them and their own way of interacting. Personally I am keen to keep my kids off facebook a while yet – the brocial fiasco is proof that Facebook is not suitable for anyone under 18 without supervision in my opinion.
While I would not try to deny for a second that bullying, etc, went on before the Internet, I personally believe that the anonymity and detachment from consequences inherent to doing these things “online” vs “in real life” make them both more likely, and more severe, when the Internet is thrown into the mix.
Or, as Penny Arcade summed it up: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/3/19/
Nor that I would try to deny kids access to social media, I just think the proposition that there’s no difference between kids interacting in the playground and kids interacting on Facebook is flawed.