There's been a lot of talk lately about children on Facebook and how to protect them. With Facebook's announcement that they may open the site up to pre-teens, a flurry of discussion was launched about how to protect children online. This is clearly a child-rearing challenge of modern times. When I was young - kids themselves were the technology threat when we picked up a telephone and made prank phone calls. As I mentioned in an earlier post, raising my kids with one landline and dial-up internet service, provided protection by limiting the amount of time my kids could spend online. Now with mobile devices and computers as the centerpiece of interpersonal communication, the challenges have become more difficult to manage.
I imagine that for all time, parents have wrestled with the challenges of finding the balance between being too permissive or too restrictive. I'm sure most, like myself, have felt the wrath of the "Bobby's parents said he can..." retort, accusingly pointing out there's something wrong with my logic. On the many occasions that exchange happened at my house, it always left me wondering what Bobby's parents were thinking. Even though I was clearly outnumbered, I'd stick to my decision much to the dismay of my unhappy children. I always felt that's what my role was - to make the best decisions for my children - whether they were going to like it or not.
Of the 900+ million Facebook subscribers, it is said that more than 7.5 million are children under age 13 with 5 million of them under age 10. Facebook clearly states in it's terms of service that subscribers must be a minimum age of 13. So how did 7.5 million children slip through the cracks? Quite simply, they lied about their age. And in many cases, they had the assistance of their parents to do it too. Now when you find yourself in this situation being challenged by your charmingly naive 10 year old who cries out that everybody else's parents think it's okay to have a Facebook page - your explanation that dishonesty is never a good decision won't provide much satisfaction for anyone.
The recent Fox News article Judge Upholds Indiana Facebook Ban for Sex Offenders addresses the complexities of protecting children online while balancing the civil rights of sex offenders who have been deemed to no longer be a threat. I truly am not familiar with the difficulties of monitoring sex offender's whereabouts and activities but I do question how easy that would be to do in the virtual world. Rather than identify themselves as a convicted offender while online, or refrain from Facebook participation altogether - couldn't they just simply make up a different name and identity? If Facebook cannot tell when a pre-teen child or his parent is lying, how will it be able to identify and block a sex offender who does the same? And at that point is it more Facebook's responsibility to protect the children than the parents? Though I understand the objectives, I question how effective it will really be to enact laws in an attempt to protect our vulnerable children online. Most laws will only come into play after a crime has been committed - and that is too late. Protecting children from predators is not a new challenge. Technology didn't create the problem and won't resolve it either. Before we turn to our lawmakers, courts and society to protect our children - we must provide a solid level of security and protection at home. Old-fashioned parenting techniques still come into play: talk with your kids, know who they interact with, stay up-to-date on what they are involved in and don't be afraid to say no to things you're uncomfortable with - even if Bobby's parents or Mark Zuckerberg said it's okay.
What do you think is the appropriate minimum age for kids on Facebook? What can and should be done to protect children from predators while online?
Have a topic you'd like to see discussed on Simply Squirrel Food? Send me an email I'd love to hear from you.
A few years ago I took to social media like the proverbial duck to water. As the self-designated "Queen of Small Talk" I found it to be a wonderful outlet to share daily events and observations. Everywhere I went I encouraged people to join me and engage in the fun on Facebook. The more my friend list grew, the more fun I had on the site. For me, fun is irresistible so I logged on frequently and shared in the seemingly never-ending clever repartee.
It actually saddens me that these days I'm finding Facebook to be far less entertaining and engaging. But why? My friend list continues to grow, though much slower than it did initially, and I'm certain these friends are just as clever now as they were before. But where did they go? Genuine engagements have nearly disappeared. My newsfeed is littered with posts that would've been caught in a spam filter if they were emails, making it a fairly tedious task to scroll through looking for glimmers of my friends' originality. With my fairly short attention span, this quickly leads to boredom. Once I leave bored, I'm not going to be in much of a hurry to return.
Though I'm sure there are many explanations for the diminishing engagements, I think one big cause of the change is marketing. In the early days of social media, businesses were wary about this new platform and were slow to adapt and utilize it for marketing purposes - leaving the site for purely social interactions. The impact of a marketing message grows commensurate with the size of the group it reaches. Once businesses and advertising agencies realized how fast Facebook was growing, they comprehended the power of being 'liked'. These days everywhere we look, we're being implored to 'like' a wide myriad of products and services and share it with our friends. The more we 'like', the more marketing-type posts we're going to find on our newsfeeds.
Marketing isn't limited to big business either. Many small and micro-business people continuously update about their business activities while seldomly sharing anything personal. Social media, and Facebook in particular, has to be a panacea for non-profits. Mimicking the practice of putting neighbors on our doorsteps to raise funds for worthy causes, we now have friends peddling for money on our newsfeeds.
Combining all these marketing messages with oft-repeated quotes, cute pictures of animals, pleas to show one's hate of cancer, love of God and country - and we'll manage quite sufficiently to squelch the clever wit of the people who at one time brought us genuine engagement and fun. And when that happens, we'll go somewhere else to find our fun.
I realize marketing is an integral part of the Facebook experience, afterall it foots the bills. But something needs to be done to restore and encourage people-to-people interactions or we'll soon be applying the Yogi Berra-ism "Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded".
Do you agree? Do you access Facebook more or less than you once did?
Have a topic you'd like to see discussed on Simply Squirrel Food? Send me an email I'd love to hear from you.
Following is an interesting infographic. It shows traits found in a newly described behavior - Facebook Addicition Disorder (FAD). Giving it the FAD acronym places it in the same alphabetical soup of better-known diagnoses and disorders like PTSD, ADD, ADHD, SAD, etc. Though I'm certain there is an ability to be addicted to just about anything, I'm not so sure that FAD is a real disorder - or if it is, that it's appropriately described and named.
If I have a related addiction, it would be to the internet and easy access to information. And yes, when I have a few minutes (several times each day) I go online to check various sites of interest. Facebook and Twitter are high on the list of sites I frequent, but so are others related to weather, sports and news. If I'm checking any online sites during a meeting, I see that as more of a reflection about how dull the meeting is than how captivating the world of social media is.
These days the advancement of mobile technology has made it easy to stay in touch and up-to-date on events that concern or interest us. I don't see that as much different than the hours spent gathering information from television, radio and newspapers from days gone by.
What do you think? Is Facebook Addiction Disorder real and appropriately named? Do you think you or someone you know has it?
Okay, so who amongst us has never envisioned themselves featured in some kind of advertisement? Many of the print and television ads I see try to portray the model as a normal person, someone easy to identify with. And when I can truly relate to the model I start to think "hey, I could do that - why doesn't this company use me in their next ad?" With the wide variety of products and services being marketed these days, one could easily think there are opportunities for everyone to be in the spotlight. Well, there is - It's closer than you know and a lot less glamorous than you might've hoped. As for those dreams of making a ton of money as a product pitch-person - you can forget about it.
Everyone who has a Facebook account has agreed to it's Terms of Service. Certainly we've all read it and understand it - right? We may want to take a look again at Item #10 -the one about our chance to be featured in ads without even knowing it:
About Advertisements and Other Commercial Content Served or Enhanced by Facebook
Our goal is to deliver ads that are not only valuable to advertisers, but also valuable to you. In order to do that, you agree to the following:
1.You can use your privacy settings to limit how your name and profile picture may be associated with commercial, sponsored, or related content (such as a brand you like) served or enhanced by us. You give us permission to use your name and profile picture in connection with that content, subject to the limits you place.
2.We do not give your content or information to advertisers without your consent.
3.You understand that we may not always identify paid services and communications as such.
So what's the big deal?Even though the terms clearly state "You give us permission to use your name and profile picture" the use of that information for sponsored ads has caught people unaware. The New York Times Daily Report: What’s Behind Facebook’s ‘Sponsored Stories’ describes an incident of a man who jokingly 'liked' a 55 gallon barrel of personal lubricant - and now everyone knows it. To read about more incidents and reactions follow the link in the article to Do People Like Being Featured in Facebook Ads?
How do you feel about the practice of Facebook using you and your influence to collect revenue from sponsored ads? Do you think you'll be less inclined to 'like' product and services?
Have a topic you'd like to see discussed on Simply Squirrel Food? Send me an email I'd love to hear from you.
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