Recently there have been several articles and videos on cnn.com about under age social networking. Technically you are supposed to be 13 years of age to sign up for social networking sites such as facebook and myspace. But recently these sites have seen and explosion of younger kids bypassing these limitations by lying about their age. Here is a video with several skype guests discussing the problem, and here is an article that came out right before the video.
I feel the moral issue on this is very hard to solve because every one grows up with different rules and boundaries. Some adults may do well in teaching their kids how to be mature and safe while others might shelter their kids so much that the kid actually ends up acting out. It is hard to draw a line on whether one is mature enough to be on these social networking sites, but then again we see immaturity everyday with people 20+ like what is mentioned in the video. I am also not sure where I stand on this issue because I have a younger brother who is 12 but has a facebook. From what I can tell he acts maturely on the social site but there could be many things I cannot see that he's doing.
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I wonder how much of an issue this really is or if it is just another reason to bring social networking and its potential harm to kids into the news. I imagine with an older brother and clued in parents your brother will be fine.
ReplyDeleteI believe the harm lies in the site where you can put privacy settings and keep things from being viewed to others. That is how people start hiding things from others which could potentially bring harm. At the same time the privacy settings allow for people to protect themselves from harmful people online. I guess it works both ways but I do think that as the years go along, we see that the groups of kids joining get younger and younger.
ReplyDeletethis also relates back to the idea of the current generation growing up with the internet and related technologies and how they dont know life without it. While we find it weird for 5th graders to receive cell phones it is only because we didnt get them until later. It just depends on the times and the current levels of technology
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