Last year when I returned home from serving my 18 month mission for the church, I decided to stay off of Facebook. I don't think Facebook is bad if it's used wisely, but I really enjoyed the 18 month break I had from it. I felt happier, I had more free time, I felt secure. When I went home for Christmas and explained that to my younger siblings, they were shocked. My 10 year old sister could not believe that I didn't have a Facebook. I couldn't believe that she had one!! Then just last week my 8 year old brother was equally shocked to find out that I didn't have an Instagram! He really wanted me to see the pictures he was taking of his Minecraft skills, so he taught me how to sign up for my very own Instagram account. The next morning I woke up with a clear mind and thought how bizarre it was for my younger siblings to be teaching me how I needed to be more connected in the interest. Because as my sister told me, "People won't know you even exist if you don't go on Facebook."
I'll save the internet identity issue for another day. Right now I want to focus on my original question of, "how young is too young?" I talked to my parents and apparently they set up accounts-with their parental monitoring- for my younger siblings.
I personally think they're way too young for these sites. There are so many risks of exposure to adult content that a child could easily stumble upon. I found a great article from a parent website that addresses my question as well:
http://www.thirdparent.com/kids-teens-and-social-media-how-young-is-too-young/
Do you think parents typically follow COPPA laws? If you were a parent, would you allow your underage children to participate? Why or why not?
I may side with the older generation when it comes to children and social media. It's a hard topic because how many of us in college have a hard time regulating a healthy digital diet? I bet we all know moms that are obsessed and post every 10 minutes on Facebook. If adults have difficulties achieving a digital balance, so to speak, how can we expect children to regulate their screen time? Obviously, parents need to be regulating but I don't know if enough parents are managing what their children are participating in online. This is an excellent question because many parents today never had an example of what their parents would allow when it comes to digital culture because it didn't exist.
ReplyDeleteI agree. I did a report on this for my advanced writing class this spring term. My group argued that adolescents below the age of 15 should not be allowed unsupervised leisure time online, at least beyond a limited time period. This is because they do not have the cognitive abilities to regulate their behavior online, time limits and online relationships especially. But I am beside myself as to how this is going to apply to my own children...
ReplyDeleteI think this is such an interesting topic and such a difficult question to find an answer to. Because yeah, too much online time is bad, but how much is too much? So many people are finding ways to make a living off of being online, and social media is a big part of that! Also, when I was a kid my mom was terrified of the internet. She wouldn't even let me get on youtube until I had bought a computer of my own. Because of this I feel like I'm still struggling to catch up on knowing how to use my computer. So many people are better with their digital devices than I am because I never had the opportunity to experiment when I was a child. I don't want my kids to have that same problem, especially with everything changing as fast as it is. But then again, I don't want my kids stumbling upon pornography or other adult content either. I dunno what the perfect answer is, but hopefully we'll figure it out as time goes on!
ReplyDelete