Two days ago I found out from my older brother that my younger brother had recently just created a Facebook account. I was a little shocked and concerned, as I tried to remember when I made my first Myspace or Facebook appearance. I came across CNN article which shows both the pros and cons of young “tweens” entering the world of social networking.
Social networking sites were just being launched while I was at my younger brother’s age. Myspace which was founded in 2003 was followed by the Facebook boom of 2004 which was my freshman year of high school. At the time, social networking sites were just beginning to make some noise in the mainstream. I can remember when I received my first cell phone after graduating eighth grade. It was for the practical purpose of calling my mom when if I was going to be late on the train coming from school. The growth of technology in the past 4 years I feel could be too fast for us to handle and control. I wasn't concerned who was on my friends list or how my Farmville is doing.
The evolution of social networking technology is still very two sided. The article has a quote from a psychology professor from cal-state university who says “For the most part, although there's so much press about all the bad things they're doing, much of what they do on these sites is stuff they would be doing anyway.” I do agree with the professor’s statement, but with a few objections. Whatever happened to calling someone on a phone or waiting till Monday to see a friend from school? The lives of the youth are being mainstreamed into the technological world we live in. New children social networking sites such as Disney’s Club Penguin, Webkinz, and Kidswirl are becoming even more popular. These new sites I feel are becoming breeding grounds for the future Facebook generation. They do have more restrictions than your typical Facebook and Myspace, but they are still a way for kids to gain access to social networking which will eventually carry over to these more popular sites.
I feel it is not natural that Facebook has evolved to having no restrictions for creating an account. All you need is an email address and you can create a profile. Creating an email address has become just as easy as tying your shoes (If not easier – But Loop Swoop and Pull still sometimes gets me). Since there are no restrictions is it safe for kids to be on these social networking sites which were first designed for a more mature an older crowd. Facebook says on its website
“Facebook requires all users to provide their real date of birth to encourage authenticity and provide only age-appropriate access to content.”
To this day because there is no age verification system for the internet there is no way of controlling what people do on sites like Facebook. This leaves room for the creation of a way of age verifying internet users. Could there be a fingerprint system which would verify you age to give you access to Facebook. The unknown reality of the internet is what makes it special. I feel we’ve come along to fast and new restriction systems need to be discovered. The freedom a kid has on social networking sites is good and bad. The bad which can be done I feel is worse than any good which can come out of these social networking sites. I feel more and more incidents which take place in schools across the country are more commonly relating back to these social networking sites. I am not saying Social Networking is an internet evil, but without the right controls it can easily lose its initial purpose by creating many problems which might have never risen if this “Tween” generation didn’t have easy access to internet social networking. These new freedoms of social networking have brought the usual lunch room drama and chatter to web where I feel kids think their actions on the internet do not have real life consequences.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/11/02/kids.social.networks/index.html
1 comments:
After reading bgahagan’s blog titled Social Networking and the “Tween Generation”, I thought to myself that the problem wasn’t about a lack of technology in social networking websites like Facebook and Myspace, but a lack in technology for using the Internet. The basis of the blog was about how anyone today can make a Facebook account as long as they claim to be of a certain age. After browsing through the privacy statement on Facebook.com (http://www.facebook.com/policy.php), I found that they require you to be 13 years old to register, and if you are under 18 they urge you to ask for parental permission. Facebook is cannot be liable for when teenagers lie about their age so I believe that they have done their part in making it clear what ages the social networking website is for. The real question is how can computers verify people’s ages.
Bgahagan proposed the idea of a fingerprint that acts as a password. This idea seems pretty attainable since fingerprint readers (4 pages of products on Amazon) have been around for multiple years now. I would suggest that the fingerprint readers upon installation require a date of birth. This too could be easily faked, but if parents are setting up accounts for their children on their computers then it is up to the parents to verify the information to limit their children’s web-browsing capabilities.
Another way that age verification could be established is through the separate user accounts that Microsoft offers already. In Microsoft Windows, separate user accounts can be created for each person that is using the Windows software on a computer. Many families use these accounts, and in the same way as I suggested for fingerprint readers, parents could verify birthdays in order to limit their children’s Internet capabilities.
I feel that parental controls are the best and only way to limit Internet access to children. Since the Internet is not actually owned by any one individual or company, it is hard to say who can and cannot use certain sites. Parental controls should be creatable under user accounts and then inappropriate websites (not just Facebook, but pornographic and other mature audience only websites) should have to recognize the controls. All of this seems easy to do on Microsoft Windows because of the separate users, but for Apple users another way will have to be created.
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