Raising safe children in a Digital world
Article from the October 2014 issue of Popular Mechanics Magazine.
Reality check: you are no longer the chief technology officer in your home.
That’s from the introduction to a new book by parenting expert Nikki Bush and leading technology commentator Arthur Goldstuck, titled Tech-Savvy Parenting: A Guide to Raising Safe Children in a Digital World. In this extract, the authors deconstruct the siren song of social media and technology…
“A real conversation is playing itself out before adults’ disbelieving eyes… It disturbs us because we think that it is replacing communication, but instead it is embracing the kind of communication that is reshaping the world.”
These lines represent the best of social media and messaging. But they also indicate the worst of what social media can mean. We can find case studies aplenty about children who find the virtual world of online communications so compelling that they abandon the real world and withdraw from social interaction with family and friends.
In most of these cases, however, the withdrawal already began before technology intervened. Lack of communication within the family and absence of parental interest in the child provide fertile ground for cyber-withdrawal.
That, however, is the exception rather than the rule. Almost every new fad in social networks among children is driven by peer-group pressure. While that does, of course, imply the impulse of children to follow the crowd, it also denotes social engagement with friends and peers. And that is exactly what social networking represents.
It offers a benefit to parents as well: if you understand social media, you have an additional window into your child’s world. You may not be able to control this world or even your child’s behaviour in it, but with knowledge, you can guide and manage your child’s place in this world.
Two kinds of social animal
Two broad types of social platform form part of children’s social activity today: instant messaging (IM) and social networks. IM started out as a simple messaging application that used a computer or phone’s data connection, rather than a phone’s SMS service.
That means, in most cases, a message costs a fraction of a cent, while an SMS to personal contacts has typically cost between 50c and 80c in South Africa. It is astonishing that children tend to embrace the concept before adults, who should be setting the example in cost consciousness.
IM can evolve into social networks, as with Mxit in South Africa. In general, social networks are content-oriented. They are typically a more rich and complex environment for sharing experiences, photos, videos and links to even more content. When children are engaging in social networking, they are not only chatting; they are also sharing.
This is the fundamental basis for Arthur’s argument that layers of communication are being added. Think of it as a multimedia form of communication, compared with one consisting only of verbal and visual cues contained in face-to-face contact. Even the emotional component of conversation, which adults assume is far richer in real life, is enhanced with emoticons (smiley faces), images and symbols that allow children to express feelings they have a hard time articulating verbally. This does not mean all forms of virtual communication are richer or more positive; only that this is more often the case. It doesn’t give parents an excuse to be less aware or vigilant of where their children go when they disappear down the virtual rabbit hole.
Let’s examine the current leading social network, why it is so compelling, and why it can be so dangerous.
Facebook was the first of the major global social networks. It started in 2004 as a social web site for a single university, and quickly expanded to universities and colleges across the United States, and then to schools and workplaces. In 2006, it became available in South Africa, and take-up was instant and exponential.
By April 2014, more than 11 million South Africans were using it, mostly on their mobile phones. Far more adults than children use it now, and it is common for grandparents to use it to keep in touch with their children and get the latest photos of their grandchildren within minutes of pics being taken.
Yes, but are they really friends?
Facebook calls contacts on their social network “friends”, which in some instances can be a complete misnomer. When 13-year-olds first sign up on Facebook, they spend the first year or two trying to connect with as many people as possible so that they can boast about the number of friends they have on the social network. It is a “badge of honour”, so to speak.
But how many of their “friends” do they really know in the real world? When asking young people this question in our talks and workshops, it is clear that many, if not most, are strangers. This is tantamount to hitchhiking and catching a lift with a stranger.
This is risky behaviour typical of teenagers. It is often difficult for them to get their heads around the fact that many of the people they are connected to could be posing as someone they are not – that digital persona can lie and use pictures of someone else. A “friend” could be a 50-year-old man posing as a 16-year-old girl, for example, and your child would not have an inkling of who they have invited into their world and what potential danger they could be opening themselves up to: stalking, predators, paedophiles and cyber-bullies, for example.
This is a real danger not to be taken lightly. Make sure your children know they are making conscious choices with consequences when they either invite someone to be their friend or accept an invitation to be a friend on Facebook. And just because one of their friends is friends with someone doesn’t mean they have to be, as this mother who uses net nanny Social to keep tabs on her daughter’s online activities discovered:
“A few days ago, I got an alert regarding my daughter’s friends on Facebook. After checking it out, I discovered someone who had requested her as a friend was someone she did not know, but she had accepted the request because some of her other friends had. The ‘friend’ was just over the age limit I felt was inappropriate to be hanging around my teenager, even virtually, so I checked around with other parents. It turned out none of these kids knew the man. They all assumed the others did!
“I did a little more digging and discovered the ‘friend’ in question lives in our neighbourhood and is on the sex-offender registry. Obviously, I shared this information with the other parents, reported my concerns to Facebook and watched my teen ‘unfriend’ this character.”
Do make sure that your child knows how to unfriend people on Facebook and other social networks.
Facebook, fraud and fear
For the first five years or so in this country, Facebook was regarded as the domain of teenagers. Facebook’s rules require that one be 13 or over to use it, but numerous under-13s lied about their ages to show how cool they were. That was to be expected. What was not expected was how many parents aided and abetted them in this flouting of a rule that was intended to protect children.
A far deeper form of dishonesty underpinned this form of digital permissiveness. For children to go on to Facebook, they must identify themselves with a school. In most cases, they would wish to name their own school, while lying about their age. This means they – and their parents – drag the school into their dishonesty.
If they were “merely” providing fraudulent information to allow their poor darlings to nibble on forbidden fruit, one could argue that as a parenting choice. But once other institutions are associated with this fraud, a line has been crossed. No parents should expect to be able to pull their children back across that line once they have allowed them to wander free in a world designed for older individuals.
That’s the first of the downsides. The second is that children do not know how to cope when faced with entirely new situations in which new dynamics apply and for which they have never been prepared. We’re talking, of course, about cyber-bullying. Much is written about it elsewhere in this book.
In the context of this chapter, bear in mind that cyber-bullying is most vicious on Facebook, where it can draw in not only a peer group, but a global gang of vicious young thugs who take enormous pleasure in the anguish of others. Suicides as a result of Facebook harassment are reported throughout the world. Absent from the headlines, however, is a high level of nervous breakdowns and social dysfunction as a result of Facebook experiences.
Allow your children into this environment when they are still finding their social and technological feet, and you multiply their chances of falling victim. Allow them on to Facebook without yourself being in there as both a friend and social explorer in your own right, and you are abandoning your responsibility.
The positive power of Facebook
Nothing has sent the world a stronger message about Facebook’s power for good than the Arab Spring that shook Tunisia and Egypt in 2010. While Facebook was not the catalyst for the revolutions in these countries, it was used to spread the message, co-ordinate protest activity, and give the world a window into repression as it was happening. Former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak tried to shut down the Internet in his country for three days to prevent word from spreading – to no avail.
Of course, children are not typically trying to foment revolution on Facebook. But they do know – even if only subconsciously – that it allows them to become participants in the world rather than merely actors or consumers of other people’s communication and content.
More and more, adults turn to Facebook to campaign against wrongs in the corporate world. A few years ago, the Woolworths chain made the ill-advised announcement that it was removing Christian magazines from the shelves because they were not selling. The obvious strategy would have been to announce removal of all low-selling magazines. Instead, they were seen as attacking a special-interest group, and one that is highly vocal.
On Facebook, “highly vocal” translates into “socially powerful” and from there into “public relations disaster”. The subsequent Facebook campaign forced Woolworths to reverse its decision.
Buoyed by such examples, more and more children are turning to Facebook to campaign for causes, to raise funds for charities, and to create support groups for anything from an ill classmate to a persecuted activist. The experience children have on Facebook today means that tomorrow they will be far less likely to be the passive consumers that their parents tended to become.
The message in the duckface
It is sad, then, to see how many children still use Facebook purely as a platform for narcissism and a home for their selfies. The “duckface” pose – children puckering up their lips in an exaggerated kiss for a camera – is the symbol of social stupidity, sending a signal of herd mentality, lack of self-respect and unwitting desire for sensual experience with anyone viewing the image.
There is only one word of advice for the duckface pose: Don’t!
However, lurking within the duckface is what makes Facebook compelling for kids: it is a place for expressing their personalities in a way that is usually not possible in the home environment.
It is an environment they feel they can make their own. It is a world that their parents tend not to inhabit as intensively as they do, so chances are that their random comments, posts and photos will go unnoticed, unlike their untidy bedroom or sloppy clothes.
In other words, on Facebook, children believe they can make a mess without being told off. That’s all very well, except that the mess is visible to the world, and sometimes the messiness spills over into inappropriate behaviour that can destroy a child’s image or self-confidence, or that of others. And it can take years to repair such damage.
The call to action for parents is simple: Facebook (as with its successors) is a very active space that you have to inhabit. It’s not a place where you can fall asleep.
Extract from Tech-Savvy parenting: A Guide to Raising Safe Children in a Digital World, published by Bookstorm
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