Children Online was contacted in February 2010 by a Junior from a New York high school who was writing a reseach paper on the negative impact of the growing "Facebook phenomenon" on younger students. Her questions were thoughtful and likely to be of interest to our readers. They are posted below with our answers.
1. What do you think is an appropriate minimum age required for kids to create a Facebook account? Why?
- We recommend age 16 as the appropriate age to begin having a Facebook account. The reasons are many and complex but they include...
- Generally, the maturity of a high school sophmore (16-year-old) is more than a 9th grader and certainly more than younger students. More mature students are better able to handle themselves in difficult situations and better understand and deal with subterfuge and harassment, both of which happen frequently in social networks.
- Behind the wheel of a car, sixteen year-olds begin to really understand and internalize the fact that their actions can have dramatic and devastating consequences on their lives and the lives of others. This experience raises their awareness. We hope that this experience also helps them, similarly, reason that their online actions can have serious consequences on their lives and the lives of others.
- Kids are impulsive and that impulsivity can have many negative consequences, especially online. This actually relates to brain maturation and, specifically, frontal lobe development (There's the topic for your next research paper.) Older teens tend to be less impulsive than younger teens and children, thus they may be thinking more about the actions they take and possible consequences than younger teens.
- Thousands of scams are perpetrated daily in popular social networks. In past workshops with high schoolers, we've educated teens about a dozen such scams that target them. Though teens and children may be savvy and knowledgeable about using technology, it doesn't mean that they are experienced and savvy enough to recognize a scam or when they are being manipulated to click a link leading to malware. Generally, older teens are more knowledgeable about computer threats and risks and are, therefore, more likely to be cautious.
- Children are growing up much too fast online and in ways that are not developmentally healthy for them. The 11-year-old boy who is exposed to extreme forms of pornography or the 9-year-old girl who is told that "Barney was raped" are both suddenly forced to deal with issues that they were not ready for. These real examples forever impact their self-image and understanding of the world sooner than they were ready for.
2. Should "social networking dangers" education become the responsibility of schools, parents, society, or a combination of the three?
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A combination of all three! However, few people truly understand all the risks and issues, and our laws are terribly inadequate. For example, teens often report to us that they would rather break up with a boyfriend/girlfriend via texting, IM or a Facebook message than in person because it is "easier." Both children and teens are avoiding difficult face-to-face conversations in their daily lives by preferring to use telecommunications technologies. This increasing avoidance will have life long consequences for them because they are not learning how to handle difficult conversations that all of us have in our lives. They are losing out on an important part of social training.Just as schools have taken on the responsibility of educating teens about the risks that come from drinking and drugs, they should educate teens about the risks and issues about life online. (We have published a curriculum for schools called "Safe Practices for Life Online" for this purpose.)Research shows that children and teens grow up healthiest in a world in which they are loved and there is consistent communication between parent and child. Loving, caring parents and other adults in their lives, such as relatives, neighbors and teachers, know that children/teens need structures and boundaries to keep them safe and to grow up at a healthy pace. There are NO structures or boundaries online. There is not a single online venue where children/teens congregate online that can provide the kind of protection and safeguards a loving caring adult can. Victimization occurs in WebKinz, Club Penguin, WeeWorld, Neopets, in instant messages and texting, in social networks and gaming chat rooms.
3. Why do you think it is so easy for students to become addicted to online communication networks such as Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, etc?
- The primary motivator of teen's behavior is the desire to "fit in", to be accepted by peers. In other words, relationships are critically important to teens. That is where they are in their development. This intense focus on their place amongst their peers makes socializing tools exceptionally important, and sometimes addictive, to them. Try a simple experiment in your class. Individually, approach your peers and enlist their participation in an experiment. Ask them to turn off their cell phone and stay off Facebook for 48 hours. Ask them to keep a journal to note their feelings and anxieties about being disconnected from their "social fabric" in this way. Run that experiment with many teens. I think you will be surprised at the level of anxiety it creates for many teens. One of our concerns for children and teens in today's world is that they are connected 24/7 to the pressures in their lives. They have little or no "down" time to process and think.
4. I personally do not visit my page more than three times per year, but my friends log on multiple times a day. Is there anything wrong with NOT using Facebook intensively?
- You are unusual in this regard, as I'm sure you are aware. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. In most workshops we've conducted with high school students in the last few years, someone always comments "why should we even continue to use Facebook" (or other social network) after we show them how targeted they are by scammers, marketers, others intent on hurting them and how little privacy they actually have. They don't understand that people ARE looking at them in their "private" accounts and that their online reputation can have life-long consequences. Viewers of private accounts include college admissions officers, police, summer camp directors, parents, scammers and marketers.