WA’s Attorney General wants to give parents legal rights over their children’s Facebook pages.
Miranda Devine, in her typically careful way with words, describes social media as “barbarism, unleashing the worst elements of human nature, with no restraints” and quotes a former highschool teacher as saying: “We know one per cent of the community are sociopaths. Unfortunately online we see more of them. They’re incredibly vocal, and the internet is their space.”
That’s right, the internet is for pr0n sociopaths.
Recently, my daughter who is 11, got a google+ invite, filled out the information, and when the child entered her birth date, Google took her account access away, including all access to her gmail. She is distraught, as are we – this is pretty crippling to both her homeschooling and her social and family connections [...]
When a friend posted a link to this on Google+, discussion turned immediately to whether or not kids should even have email accounts at all, on the grounds that they are too young, and need to be protected from the dangers of the internet.
In short: life in the global village is nasty and brutish.
Our conventional response to all media, namely that it is how they are used that counts, is the numb stance of the technological idiot.
- Marshall McLuhan
In response to Paul Howes’ discovery that mean people exist and use social media technology to say mean stuff Chas Licciardello wrote last year: “The web has been around for around 20 years now, but sometimes it seems people have been bemoaning anonymous internet trolls for the last 20,000.”
The internet didn’t cause bullying, or sexual abuse, or fraud. It didn’t invent the desire to talk about cats, or what one had for breakfast. While it isn’t as simple as “guns don’t kill people” – the internet has certainly changed society – nor has it created an entirely new one out of thin air. McLuhan would say that through Facebook and Twitter we have extended ourselves further, making time and space increasingly irrelevant to our ability to communicate with other people. The grapevine has become louder, faster, bigger and more permanent than before, and it is certainly worth our time figuring out both what we can and what we should do about that.
Giving parents the legal right to access their child’s Facebook account does not fit into either category. It would be almost impossible to implement, and even if they figured out a way, any parent who was relying on the law to get them access to their child’s account would probably soon find their child no longer there. Focussing on how parents can control their child’s social media experience misses the point as badly as every cranky adult who tried to ban dancing in an 80s film. We’re basically talking about social media chaperones.
We teach children to participate in the world by slowly letting them be a part of it. We begin by bringing them with us to our parties, then we let them attend their friends’ parties – we stay with them sometimes, leave them with other parents at other times. Slowly they reach the stage where they have their own parties and parents must simply trust that they’ve taught them well enough.
Internet bullying is an important and broad subject, and we should be careful not to conflate incidents such as tragic suicides with simply upsetting faceless men. Anonymity, pseudonymity, bitchiness, righteous anger, activism, stoushing, trolling, pile-ons, criticism, sarcasm, humour, mockery, deindividuation. Anyone who thinks these things were created by the internet, as opposed to being amplified by it, isn’t just ignorant of internet technology but of life in general.
This ridiculous man illustrates the point nicely. He uses a story in which he refuses to socialise with the parents at his school as proof that abstinence works, and I guess he figures it’s as convincing to rational people as it is to him. Except what he’s actually saying is that it’s better to avoid interacting with humans than to risk bad things happening to you.
As people in the midst of such massive changes, it’s often difficult to accurately describe what’s happening and what it means for society. Social media has brought us anonymous trolls and the ability speak truth to power. It makes it easier to bully people and easier to reach them and let them know they aren’t alone. Television, email, sms, social media, whatever, it’s all the real world now. Instead of trying to keep kids out of it for as long as possible, let’s work on giving them the skills to live in it.
A slight digression on the cancelling of Google email accounts:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/violetblue/google-plus-deleting-accounts-en-masse-no-clear-answers/567?tag=mantle_skin;content
Now that could be a real pain if you’ve had your email address for years.
So many different things in the post, I am not entirely sure what the point being made is.
But one observation is you can’t do this:
“We teach children to participate in the world by slowly letting them be a part of it. We begin by bringing them with us to our parties, then we let them attend their friends’ parties – we stay with them sometimes, leave them with other parents at other times. Slowly they reach the stage where they have their own parties and parents must simply trust that they’ve taught them well enough. “
Without the ability to control their social media experience, or more correctly, observe it, it’s impossible to do.
The way to teach a child is to , show them how to do something, let them try, and correct/guide them when they get it wrong. In order to this you need to be able to observe their actions, and with social media or email you either have access to their communications or you don’t.
The problem I have with discussion of this issue is that no one seems to distinguish between children or adolescents. Basically the amount of supervision a young person requires will, obviously, differ with their age. You wouldn’t force your 16 year old to hold your hand when you cross the road. Well I wouldn’t. And yet I see blog posts which say this policy aimed at children is unfair to adolescents, and I go yes, yes it is, because children aren’t adolescents.
I’m not arguing that anything is “unfair”. I’m arguing that it’s counter-productive.
The bit you’ve quoted shows that I am distinguishing between children and adolescents. What I’m not doing is seeing them as two discrete categories, rather they are all on a continuum leading towards adulthood.
Getting access to your child’s Facebook account by controlling their computers and devices is not the same as getting legal access through third parties to access an account. Just as deciding whether or not to let a child go to a party without you does not require legal force.
Cyber bullying is the best thing ever! Finally the school bullies are leaving a well documented log of every incident of what they are doing to people. Back when I was at school the jerks would get away with everything. While the targeted, who eventually fight the bullies, would get expelled and everyone would seem to lie to protect the popular group. It seems that all the anti-internet stuff is more about protecting bullies, and to stop those that are feeling isolated from connecting with their peers around the world.
Oh I agree about the continuum of evolution.
“Getting access to your child’s Facebook account by controlling their computers and devices is not the same as getting legal access through third parties to access an account”
And this is where the argument breaks. Children probably shouldn’t have facebook accounts for a start it’s a violation of the TOS. Secondly I don’t actually trust facebook. So we enter this point where were arguing against against something for children based on how we should treat adolescents, ie it’s stupid. You need to distinguish age because it’s relevant to the discussion. So when I say “children” I mean kids under 13 and most likely talking about 7-10 year olds.
Also you can’t get “access” to their account by controlling their physical devices( well you can but it’s a pain in the arse). The only way to get access to their account is for face book to give it to you or your child to. And the only way that facebook is going to do that is if you force them by law, which is precisely why they don’t offer their services to children under 13.
What people are really saying is “why can’t I monitor my child’s online behaviour digitally.”
It’s not a clear cut issue and is based on issues surrounding a minor’s right to privacy either digital or otherwise. It’s also worth pointing out that by and large the parent is responsible for the actions of the child.
“barbarism, unleashing the worst elements of human nature, with no restraints”
They used to say the same thing about newspapers when they first started. Moral panics – unchanged since the days of Gutenberg – and always with the goal of keeping the marginalised in their place.
Pretty obviously giving parents the legal right to access children’s social media accounts is unlikely to work in practice. But I think engineers who work at facebook/google etc should think about how they can provide those sorts of services for parents. Eg allow one user to give total read only access to another user.
Can think of it as L-plates for various internet services for children (or those who are very inexperienced). For example, I’ve setup an email account for my niece in a way such that her parents get a copy of every email that she receives. She knows this happens so its not really spying. And eventually when she gets experienced enough the copying mechanism will be removed.
Surely Facebook and Google+ know by the traffic if an account is used by school kids or adults. The National Security Agency uses software to scan phone calls and emails in an effort to pinpoint terrorists and I bet the research behind that software can also identify schoolkids.
It’s lack of commercial will that permits school kids to run amok on electronic social networks
and there I was thinking that war was “barbarism, unleashing the worst elements of human nature, with no restraints.” Or, at least, rugby league. I was looking the wrong way all the time… so here’s to more war, and less facebook. Miranda Devine gets her priorities right as ever.
You’re kidding right? Maybe they could do some 3l1t3 sp34k detection
@2: Children enter a world where they have a private life that is known by others but not their parents very early in life. For example, any normal child will interact with other children when they go to school. In many cases some of this interaction may involve dark things like bullying and being bullied as well as more desirable activities. I am not sure that the net has changed it all that much.
As parents the important things are to discuss the morality of what the child does on the net and life in general. We can also talk to children about how they can handle bullying and other difficulties as well as providing support when things get really bad.
Control freakery almost direct from the red state heartlands of the US, via the fundy pentecostals and opus dei types.
Is there no aspect of life so small that they are not compelled to microscopically seek colonisation of it and from the inside, the very soul, out.
I say again, this morlock urge toward control; really a bit weird, sinister unnerving. Nauseating.
“[B]arbarism, unleashing the worst elements of human nature, with no restraints” – so she wasn’t talking about News Corp hacking scandal?
Yes, that’s what they’re saying. What I’m suggesting, in part, is that’s the wrong question. Technology would allow us to send young kids to school with tiny tape recorders so that we can monitor their conversations if we wanted to. It’s worth unpacking why we wouldn’t consider that, while we think nothing of wanting that power over kids’ digital conversations.
We need to try harder to uderstand what social media actually is. Then maybe we could look at ways of protecting children while also giving them the freedom they need to learn how to negotiate social media. Perhaps a mechanism where parents must provide a second level of approval for friend requests, while still allowing the child a level of privacy in what they talk about, as we would do when we get to know people in real life before trusting our kids with them.
We need to stop being distracted by the new bits of the Internet and think more about how it’s still just people communicating, and it’s a world we need to learn how to live in.
@11 John D is right to see continuity where others see change.
The other continuity that parental monitoring of social media would bring is domineering, controlling and even abusive parents invading every corner of their child’s life. That used to happen before the Interwebs too!
I thought parents already had legal access to their child’s social media accounts? Isn’t that what “in loco parentis” means?
Unless things have changed since I was a wee nipper it’s still the case that until the little munchkin is 18 it doesn’t own property, can’t enter into a contract (in most cases) and so on. Which is sodding annoying if your parents decide to sell the car you bought because they need money, to give one example that happened to a friend of mine. But also means that if you are willing to wheel out the lawyers I think you’d be able to get access to just about anything. Or lose access to your child, depending.
Go to your kid’s computer. Load facebook.com. They are probably already logged in.
Still worried? Do what my parents did: take the modem away.
The main problem is that the main user for a “parental login” facility would be perves. It’d be pretty trivial for Johnny McWindowlessvan to pose as a parent.
” Deindividuation”, a deliciously explained concept belonging to the same family of ideas as “othering”, a stock in trade for people like Bolt and Devine and many politicians.
A thread with unpleasant implications, offered in a typically understated way.
Anna
Would you care to expand on this idea? Sure, they are objectively real but I think there remains a distinction between things that embody symbolic representations and existent reality. Is virtual sex the same as real sex?
McLuhan spent a career expanding on it, but basically what I mean is that social media is still just people interacting.
We don’t think of the telephone as not real. Facebook and Twitter are just other technologies for letting people communicate with each other. While the telephone removes the problem of distance, Facebook removes the problems of distance and time (you can have a conversation with someone without being in the same room, or even participating at the same time – you could reply to me tomorrow and it’s still a conversation).
That’s not to say there aren’t problems with any new technology. In the case of social media there’s the fact that it’s permanently recorded, and that there’s a bigger risk of private conversations becoming public etc. But that’s just a bigger problem than someone eavesdropping on you, or hacking your voicemail. The benefits and the drawbacks are both bigger.
Understanding what social media is (and what the internet is) can help us understand what the problems actually are. As I said above, in the “real” world, we wouldn’t think of sending our kids to school with bugging devices to track who they’re talking to and what they’re saying. But we would still exert some control on who they talk to by getting to know their friends and teachers etc. So maybe there’s an argument for something along those lines where parents can control who their Facebook friends are, without necessarily always knowing what they’re talking about, and slowly letting go of that power as we judge them able to exercise it wisely.
There are lots of dangers we can’t protect kids from, and in the non-internet world we recognise that we mostly have to teach kids how to be safe and function in it, by slowly giving them more and more independence in it. But yet the reaction to the internet is always about keeping kids away from something that is going to be a huge part of their lives from now on, and assuming they’ll just one day be old enough to know how to participate.