Parents are responsible for their children, but who is responsible for them when they go online?
This issue was alerted to me by a tweet about the really young being on Facebook and how parents are allowing them to do so. Is this really an issue though? It is when the same parents complain about privacy and the nasty stuff they find on Facebook.
My response was that my generation are familiar with SNS, we’ve been through them now and in the future, when we all decide to have children we know the responsibilities and what happens when young kids socialize online. This doesn’t necessarily mean that every single parent out there today is a huge social technophobe but those who allow their children to go on Facebook and other sites, no permission or with permission, it doesn’t matter; these same parents should not slam SNS about security and content.
I think there is also an alarming lack of awareness on parental control and privacy with children under the age of 13. My parents signed up to get internet pretty late; I think I was 12. So my online progress was really slow compared to my peers. I don’t know about you guys but when we got the dial up stuff and all, my parents were on my back constantly whenever I was on the internet, and the internet provider had timers and passwords. All I ever used it for was homework. But I’m that might have played a factor. I’m pretty certain my parents had similar issues with whatever they used to do back then. I have two younger brothers and they have its easy now. Am I jealous of the freedom they have on the web considering I waited a whole year until I was left with only my mum watching me? In some ways no, but I am concerned. My parents have become complacent with what my brothers do, both my parents are on Facebook so it’s not like they are completely in the unknown.
No child right now could care less if Facebook had age restrictions, they probably aren’t even conscious of the regulations that are in place. Zuckerberg want’s the age restrictions lifted saying that Facebook can be used for educational purposes. One way to work around this could be to have joint parent and child accounts where there are limits set in place set by the parents. How great would it be if some Asian parents kept these limits until they got married?
(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2073123/More-half-13s-illegal-Facebook-account-parents-helped-sign-up.html?ito=feeds-newsxml)
I completely agree with you Alain that there is a perceived lack of awareness of privacy and security with parents, in regards to content on the internet, especially Facebook; with the majority of children free to do what they want online. Most parents believe that an enormous website/business like Facebook must be secure as the website is monitored in some respect. Thus, there appears to be a more hands – off approach with monitoring a child’s browsing of the internet. Parents generally believe their child on face value when asking is a certain website or tool is safe, with a simple ‘yes’ being suffice evidence that a website is safe.
ReplyDeleteFacebook does have a section in which it does provide suggestions to parents about applying security and privacy settings to their child’s Facebook account. However, the most effective suggestion they provide to parents’ is ‘talk to your kids, educate them about internet safety, and ask them to use our extensive privacy settings.’ However, we know this is not the case with most parents.
However, there is software available to control a child’s access to the internet, with time management, website control and blocking, monitoring of chat sessions etc. One such website I found is kidswatch.com, where these features can be utilised. However, implementing such measures could be seen as a break of trust between a child and their parent(s), which could spiral into further problems, so such measures should be used with caution.
http://www.facebook.com/help/parents
http://www.kidswatch.com/