Friday, July 19, 2013

Elementary School Kids and Social Media: A Dicey Proposition

If you think kids as young as 6 years old aren't posting and chatting away on social media, better think again.

The article "Does Instagram Put Kids at Risk?" in the June/July issue of Scholastic Parent & Child magazine takes an eye-opening look at just how young some users of this particular social media app really are.

Writer Sharon Duke Estroff went on an "undercover mission" for this piece, exploring the potential upsides and pitfalls of kids using Instagram, a photo-sharing app owned by Facebook that's increasingly popular among school kids. Estroff posed on Instagram as a "fun-loving 10-year-old girl with an affinity for Justin Bieber and all things adorable," she writes. And some of what she discovered might stop parents in their tracks.

"I saw little boys tossing around four-letter words like footballs; I followed young girls who asked me to 'like' their pictures if 'you think I look sexy'; I viewed popular posts that included an alleged paparazzi pic of Zac Efron's private parts," Estroff writes. All this on the accounts of elementary school children.

Technically, you must be at least 13 to use Instagram. It's clearly stated in the app's "Terms of Use." Facebook, Snapchat and other social networking services have the same age requirement. They have to in order to comply with the federal Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which makes it illegal to collect, use, or disclose personal information from anyone under 13 without parental consent.

But as Internet safety expert Larry Magrid writes in Forbes, COPPA is about preventing the collection of personal information, not about online safety. "COPPA compliance in no way means that the site is safe or appropriate for young children," Magrid writes.

And the age cutoff certainly isn't stopping kids from signing up in droves. In a study by McAfee released last month, 85% of kids ages 10 to 12 admitted to having a Facebook profile. Last year, a study by Ipsos on kids and social media found that 29% of all kids ages 6-12 had an account on a social media site.

Facebook was by far the most popular site among kids in the Ipsos study, and statistics show that there are millions of users under 13 on Facebook. But the popularity of Instagram and Snapchat among elementary school kids has soared in recent months.

Statistics on underaged kids using these apps are hard to come by, but in her Scholastic Parent & Child article, Estroff describes a world in which 8-year-olds are using Instagram like old pros, posting photos, sharing comments, collecting hundreds of followers and "liking" each other's posts.

Estroff's Instagram investigation was triggered by her own 10-year-old daughter complaining that everyone at her school had an Instagram account but her. Estroff eventually "caved," as she says, and let her daughter sign up — but only under close supervision and with strict rules.

When it comes to social media, the "Everybody's doing it!" argument is a powerful one parents are up against these days. And it's a hard spot for parents to be in.

On the one hand, we don't want to deprive kids of important opportunities to be part of the group and to feel that they belong. Through Instagram and other social media services, kids stay connected to each other and can enjoy support and encouragement from peers and a much desired sense of community. What kid doesn't want to be "liked," online or off?

On the other hand, we don't want our kids being "followed" online by complete strangers or accepting requests from strangers to be followed. We don't want them harassed or bullied online, or subjected to posts, comments, photos and videos that are far too mature for their age.

Even with close monitoring and safeguarding, Estroff writes, inappropriate posts still slipped through to her daughter's new Instagram feed: "A string of raunchy jokes posted by a boy in her class who had re-posted them off of his older sister's Instagram; pictures of a friend's older brother funneling beer at a fraternity party; 20 minutes later, the same boy urinating on a car," Estroff writes. We're talking about a 10-year-old's account here. "As a parent, I was mortified," she writes.

And yet many parents find they must weigh these risks against the potential benefits that socializing online might have for their kids. Many, like Estroff, let their younger kids sign up for these 13-and-over services but are committed to keeping track of what their kids are doing on them and to protecting them from possible harm.

Estroff gives a helpful list of "Rules to Keep Kids Safe" using Instagram. These include creating a joint account with your kid; controlling the password; reviewing posts, followers, followees and comments; and setting time limits for using the app, which she calls "highly addictive."

And yes, making sure your child's account is private. This is truly key. Instagram accounts are public by default. Estroff writes that about half of the kids she saw on Instagram had accounts that were public. So it's up to parents to take charge and actively change the privacy settings.

Instagram's Photo Map feature.
It's also important to never activate the app's Photo Map option, which shows the exact location that a photo was taken, "down to the street number," Estroff explains. (For more on geotagging and kids, see the previous post on this blog. Also see this recent Digital Trends piece on a petition to Instagram to make it disable its geotagging feature and change its default privacy settings. For info on a new parents' guide to Instagram, see this post.)

Staying on top of all this is a lot to ask of parents. The recent McAfee study — which explored the "online disconnect" between parents and kids when it comes to online activities — reported that 80% of parents do not even know how to find out what their children are doing online. The study showed that a large majority of parents — 74% — say they do not have the time or energy to keep up with their children's online activity. They're throwing in the towel and just hoping for the best.

But if parents don't remain vigilant about protecting kids from inappropriate content online, who will? Certainly not the social media services.

In a recent Digital Trends article, writer Kate Knibbs shows how and why social media sites like Facebook and Instagram are failing to keep young kids off their services. Even the new SnapKidz feature on Snapchat for kids under 13, which rolled out last month, won't keep kids off the real service, Knibbs argues.

When kids who are under 13 try to sign up for Snapchat, the popular app that lets users send self-deleting photos, the new SnapKidz mode now kicks in. It allows kids to take photos and doodle on them, but it won't let them send them to anyone. Knibbs calls this new feature pointless — "a meaningless mea culpa that will achieve absolutely nothing." Savvy kids know all they have to do to get the real Snapchat service is plug in a fake birth date. It's what they do on all social media sites that require a birth date to "prove" that you're 13 or older.

"SnapKidz is like a pair of really flimsy, slightly deflated arm floaties," Knibbs writes. "Parents slip them on their kids and may assume they won’t have to watch them swim as closely. But they don’t actually make the child safer."

There's not much Snapchat or other social media services can do to keep underaged kids off without requiring complicated background checks, Knibbs says. And such checks are not likely to happen. So it will remain up to parents and other adults to pay close attention to what young kids are doing online and to keep them safe. A "snap," right? Not so much in today's rapidly changing digital world.

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