Should Social Media Companies be More Restrictive to Children?

Children’s Commissioner Anne Longfield claims that companies like Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat are not doing enough to educate children on social media terms and safety. She believes that “Children have absolutely no idea that they are giving away the right to privacy or the ownership of their data or the material they post online” (Shultes). She believes that social media companies need to educate and be more transparent about the information and accesses they request from children who may not understand. These companies offer long and detailed terms of conditions that are not read by children or not understood.

On the flip side, big social media companies argue that they do a lot to ensure the safety of young people on their platforms. For example, Facebook includes tools such as “Parents Portal,” “Privacy Basics” and “Safety Center.” Snapchat believes they make their terms and conditions as clear and understandable as possible.

Who do you think is right when it comes to children’s safety on social media platforms?

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-41429866

10 thoughts on “Should Social Media Companies be More Restrictive to Children?

  1. I believe that social media platforms could do more to watch out for children’s safety and privacy, but I don’t think it is mainly on them. I believe parents should be watching out for the websites their child go on and what they are putting out there. Kids are too young to understand how what they put out on the internet for everyone to see can have a negative impact on them for the rest of their life. Even though kids hate when their parents are on top of them about messages, or looking to see things that they only want their friends to see, it is a necessary and they will be happier later on in life that their parents did. I was the same way when I was younger. I hated my parents looking at my Facebook and Instagram because they would always find something they didn’t like and would tell me to take it down. At the time I thought they were making a big deal out of nothing, but now it makes a lot more sense to me and I’m happy its deleted. As far as what social media platforms can do, is I believe they can set safety locks on certain words that they never want their kids to see or post. Also could make a feature that sends a parent a notification every time their child posts something or feature where they have to confirm that they are allowing their child to post something first. Children should not be exposed to certain things at such a young age and should not be getting involved in a lot of the discussions that go on online.
    Here is a link to more ways to monitor a child’s social media. https://www.parenting.com/gallery/social-media-monitoring-kids

  2. I strongly agree that there should exist some form of regulation toward children on social media platforms. As time goes forth, social media has become one of the inseparable parts of people’s lives. At the same time, as smartphones and computers getting much more popular and widespread among children, there are much more accessible methods for children to use social media. Thus, due to children’s lack of experience and easily making reckless decisions without thinking, it is necessary for social media companies to ensure a certain regulation toward children. For example, in China, there have been several cases where children spent hundreds of thousands of money behind their parents back to reward those anchors who play games online live on social media; and there also have been several cases where underaged girls got spammed by people they met on social media. (I couldn’t find any articles in English that describes this phenomenon, but I have read about this a lot of times in China.) Although social media companies have claimed that they have regulations toward such situation, children will come up with many ways going around the regulations using policy flaws such as pretending to be their own parents. Therefore, I think it is really necessary for these companies to strengthen their restriction toward children.

  3. I see both positive and negative effects of social media on children. I completely agree with you that kids don’t know what they are giving up when the post personal information on social media, however with the correct parental controls, social media allows sky kids to socialize with out the pressure of face to face contact. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics “Engaging in various forms of social media is a routine activity that research has shown to benefit children and adolescents by enhancing communication, social connection, and even technical skills.” Social media allows kids who are uncomfortable socializing with peers in person the opportunity to test the waters online, and then move into face to face communication. This can be beneficial to the right kind of child, however this is the same social disconnection that leads to cyberbullying. Regardless of if we like it or not, social media and other technology is becoming more pervasive in our society, and we can’t hide it from kids. Instead we must innovate it and make it safe and teach them how to use it in a responsible way.

  4. I have similar concerns about social media restrictions on children at very young age. As more and more kids nowadays have access to smartphones and laptops, it increases the possibility of them using social media as well. While the companies have claimed that they have detailed terms of conditions listed while registering, how many of us will actually read it word by word? Not to mention that young kid has little sense of legal responsibility and may not even understand what the sophisticated wording was about. Most kids under 13 have not yet developed good cognitive functions for self-control. Also, kids’ under 13 years old are protected under COPPA, which restricted the websites to gather personal information from them. While it is hard to completely prevent young kids from signing up an account, social media can definitely do more than what they already have done. YouTube videos that contain violence, sex, or adult contents can only be viewed by 18 or older. I think this is a good way to restrict teenager from exposing to improper contents for their age.
    Below is a reference of why age restriction is important
    https://www.netnanny.com/blog/the-importance-of-social-media-age-restrictions/

  5. I agree; I don’t think social media companies do enough to inform children about privacy and safety online. Kids don’t comprehend that anyone can see what they post online. One of my younger cousins is twelve, and he has an instagram account. He posted his cell phone number in his bio, and his account was not on private. He didn’t realize that anyone could see his phone number, he thought only his friends could. His parents didn’t even know he had an instagram. A big part of the problem is that companies don’t do enough to educate children about privacy and safety upon creating an account. Facebook could be doing more to protect children. Their policy is that a user must be 13 to create an account. The age restriction doesn’t stop kids from creating an account, they just lie about their ages. Facebook could change this rule, and just make accounts have different features and settings for children based on age. However, I also think parents need to be more cognizant of what their children are doing online, and teach them how to protect their privacy and be safe.

    source:
    https://www.facebook.com/help/441374602560317/

  6. I totally agree with what Anne Longfield claimed. Social media is one of the most common activities in our modern days not only for children but also for adults. By using social media, people could express the point of theirselves, share experience that may help others, obtain the newest update news, pick up with some people that you may in the same school etc. It helps us a lot nowadays but it could also bring some negative affects. According to what Gwenn Schurgin O’Keeffe said, 75% of teenagers have their own smartphone and 22% of teenagers log on to their social media more than 10 times per day. Social media is a place that people can say whatever they want and see things whether it’s good or bad. And at the same time, your personal information you upload before will be known my more and more people. And also according to Lois Beckett, social media companies are collecting your name, website address, interests, hometown and visit history when you are using social media. And even some companies will analyze users’ Comments, like, shares’ and other information. Which means that we are actually sharing our personal information with the social media company. As for children, they have not been educated that how important their personal information is and they probably add as much information as possible in their homepage, which is what social media companies really like: collect user data. I still remember one day I was having coffee and chatting with my friends in Starbucks. Four or five elementary school students sat next to us and was comparing how many fans they have on their social media for fun. I was shocked that they are only about ten years old, but they can use social media well including posting, sharing, commenting and other uses. So I think it’s better for children not to use social media before they realize the negative impacts of what they are using.
    Source:
    Gwenn Schurgin O’Keeffe, 2011, ‘The Impact of Social Media on Children, Adolescents, and Families’, http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/127/4/800.full
    Lois Beckett, Nov 2012, ‘Yes, Companies Are Harvesting – and Selling – Your Facebook Profile’, https://www.propublica.org/article/yes-companies-are-harvesting-and-selling-your-social-media-profiles

  7. I’m pretty sure that it is very important for social media companies be more restrictive to children. Social media are designed for people to communicate with each other, not only adults but also children in primary school have to communicate with their friends. A study by knowthenet.org.uk found that about 59% of children have used a social network by the age of 10. What’s more, almost about every social media site allows users to sign up when they reach 13 years of age. Which means the social media companies have already noticed that they will have a large amount of teenage users, and they should be responsible for what kind of information these children would get from their social media. It is true that technology has been wide spread for decades, and children may know how to use an iPad even before they know how to ride a bike, but that does not mean they are totally aware about what they are facing and exposed to when on the internet.

  8. I think, some things weren’t really meant for children so its not the companies fault if those kids start to use it yet, if the company knows they are attracting a good amount of children then its there responsibility to adapt. So, I believe there should be some kind of age restrictions. One, the children’s information is exposed, so the COPPA act protects children from that but some companies may not ethical on that. Also even though this generation of kids are really good with technology it doesn’t mean that they are mature enough to make good decisions. They don’t understand the completely how everything they do online affects them and others.
    source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diana-graber/3-reasons-why-social-media-age-restrictions-matter_b_5935924.html

Leave a Reply