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Risks and consequences of children using the internet
Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998
Risks and consequences of children online
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Social networking websites such as Twitter, Myspace or Facebook are becoming increasingly present in our society. Such systems allow people to communicate with each other, find old acquaintances, plan events or even share trip pictures. While teenagers have been using these services for more than ten years, a trend has been recently noticed where children younger and younger have been joining social networking websites. Under the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA) in the United States of America, any website which will contain information about someone under 13 years of age must require parental consent before said child is allowed to utilize the website. In Canada and other countries, however, there is no such thing as COPPA and websites are free to operate for whichever audience intended. This essay will attempt to demonstrate that websites such as Facebook should impose and enforce a minimum age requirement nonetheless. Having a reasonable age limit for social networking services including Twitter or Facebook would permit the prevention of exposure to inappropriate content, prevent the formation of narcissistic ideals, and it would either prevent or delay biased perceptions of what is socially and morally acceptable in our society.
First, while Facebook is great for sharing amusing or interesting content, it is unfortunately also great for sharing offending and disturbing images, videos, or text messages. According to a nationwide survey of the United States, more than 40% of Americans between grades 4 and 8 were bullied online in the year 20031. If this staggering statistic is applied to the Canadian child population, this represents more than 2 million children, being bullied through the means...
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...tworking websites such as Facebook. Three compelling arguments have been presented in support of this topic. It would allow to avoid offensive content, make the future generation much less egoistical and permit children to fully understand the values of our society before taking part in it. The minimum age requirement is a way to help our future generations, and while it may even appear impossible to enforce, it should be made a priority to protect our youth from the dangers it is presenting itself with. While censorship may not seem like the best of solutions, it is often the only way to protect a population from itself.
Works Cited
I-SAFE, Cyber Bullying: Statistics and Tips, USA, 2004
Laura E. Buffardi and W. Keith Campbell, Narcissism and Social Networking Web Sites, 2008
CTV News, Man fired for applauding Vancouver riot on Facebook, Vancouver, 2011
Lily Huang author of Protect the Willfully Ignorant states “An increasingly urgent question of privacy or how best to keep your public plot walled in” (474). Most internet users savvy or not, are aware of the potential risks. Most people know the potential risk for permanency and of the pictures or information we put out on social networks or other sites and the content being seen. We have all heard the warnings since grammar school from everyone about the internet and how to use it. Teachers, parents, librarians and school inundate our children all throughout school about information on safe usage. To be aware of predators and such is common knowledge. Why the need for laws to protect childrens’ privacy, and usage against exploitation? Similar reasons to why we wear seatbelts while driving and it is enforced by law. We all want our freedoms not to be infringed but at what cost and to who? We are aware of the statistics and outcomes of auto accidents without seatbelts and the need “to protect the willfully ignorant” (Huang). Lily Huang discussed consumer’s lack of expertise for making the best privacy decisions and how important default privacy settings are on social networks (475).
Adolescent are mostly convicted in posting for examples their personal picture on websites such as Facebook, thinking that only their peers can see it. One thing that must be acknowledged is that with the evolution of technology “Facebook [is] less private and more public.” (Subrahmanyam) Many people can access it either by hacking it, or by creating fake pages. The use of Facebook has been
We all know that internet is the future of education and therefore the future for our younger generations. The whole point of the internet is to expand the reach for kids and adults of knowledge at interactions. This cannot be done if sexual predators stalk the chatrooms of myspace. This cannot be done if insecure teens are being bashed by the bullies of cyber world. It is impossible if the companies that create these websites do not prioritize the safety of its users. This is why there must be an age restrictions in order to minimize the risks.
“Children start using the internet at the average age of three and most to spend twice as much time online as their parents” (Ward, 2013). Through the information age, the internet has become an invaluable tool. We have information at our fingertips in record time, but not everything on the internet is appropriate for everyone to see. Pornography, hate speech, and writings meant to incite violence are making their way to children’s computer screens every day. Scary, but we can change this. Internet filters can change this. Personal computer filters exist today and will help prevent children from accessing inappropriate material, but children also use the internet away from home. Libraries, schools, and community centers all offer internet services to children, but are they safe using these resources? The federal government should require by law that all public or government-funded computers have filters to block the access to material deemed inappropriate or objectionable for children. This would help protect children from exposure to inappropriate materials outside of their home.
Did you know that, “Over half of adolescents and teens have been bullied online, and about the same number have engaged in cyber bullying” (“Bullying Statistics” 1). Teens are affected everyday by bullying on social media; this form of bullying, called cyber bullying, has become more of a dilemma within the last 10-15 years as technology continues to advance and more and more people start to use these social media sites. Scott Meech states that, “this form of harassment is worse than physical bullying because it subjects the victim to humiliation from a large audience, since embarrassing pictures or taunts are typically spread throughout a peer group.” He explains more by saying that, “victims have no safe haven from cyber-bullying because
This world has become immersed in online media from socializing on networking sites to seeking information on search engines. People of all ages have become reliant on online media, but the most engaged users are the younger, more easily impacted generations. Although there are many positive uses for online media, there are many negative uses as well. Unfortunately, it is all too easy for these negative effects to impede upon the perceptions of adolescents. Some countries have been trying to reduce this effect by expelling the inappropriate content of online media ("Influence on Children Media...”). However, in the United States, children are thrown in the waves, expected to stay afloat in this massive sea, but many are being dragged under the surface by the nefarious temptations media creates. Content that is not appropriate for the young, growing minds of children are easily accessible; a myriad of devices may be used to access this material, all at the click of a button. Without adult content filters on online media, adolescents of various ages are exposed to dangerous conceptions. A world of pornography, violence, and public humiliation lay in the user’s fingertips.
Generally, social networking provides online sexual predators with an easy gateway to youths. Users of online social media services tend to share copious amounts of personal information on online profiles, these same users control who can or cannot see their information by utilizing privacy settings. The problem with these “privacy settings” is that they are often hard to manipulate, leaving a multitude of online profiles vulnerable to often explicit offers from online sexual predators. Lacking the ability to protect their information properly, users are in jeopardy of being contacted by sexual predators. In fact, “[d]uring the years prior to the explosive expansion of social networks, most online sexual predators attempted to contact youths through chat rooms and message boards. In recent years, however, predators are increasingly targeting minors over social networking services”, showing that social networking directly puts youths in peril (Guo, 626). This sheds light on the fact that social networking is basically a way to herd youths and display them ...
Cyberbullying has risen since the inception of social media sites and the rise of the internet. While the statistics regarding cyberbullying vary widely, anywhere from ten to forty percent or more of adolescents have reportedly been bullied online. The percentage of those on social media, like Facebook, has an even gre...
There has been controversy as to whether parents should limit the use of social media by teenagers. Teenagers feel that there is no need to limit the use of their social media networking, but on the other hand, parents should feel the need to limit their use and also keep track of their teen’s social networking. Social media allows students to be connected with their peers, teens who post positive status are more likely to be involved in extracurricular activities, and for many teens putting up “selfies” is a self confidence boost; however, too much social media can affect students GPA in school, cyber bullying can affect social health. Social media networks can give out personal information. Social media sites such as Facebook are one of the most popular social media sites that has 700,000-750,000 members joining each day.
Social media is described as content created and shared by individuals on the web using freely available websites that allow users to create and post their own images, video and text information and then share that with either the entire internet or just a select group of friends (Affilorama, 2012). They are more like a website allowing you to express your daily activities, beliefs, locations, likes, dislikes, photos, music, etc. They are used by creating a profile, and logging in through either the website, or apps now used on smartphones, or any portable device with Wi-Fi connection. Although most social media networks are directed towards adults and young adults, young children are getting into these websites as well. There are usually age limits but there isn’t a certainty that all the users provided their actual age, allowing whoever wants to be a member of these sites to bypass an age limit “security” procedure. Facebook and MySpace require users to be at least 13, but they have no practical way to verify ages, and many young users prete...
Social media bullying is becoming a growing problem, not only in the United States, but all around the world. Children can easily have access to the internet and social media sites and therefore say whatever they want to others in order to boost their self-esteem. In order to prevent social media bullying, children and parents must be aware of all internet dangers and also what children are capable of. Parents should monitor what their kids are saying and doing online and take action if they are not behaving in an appropriate way.
In fact a Consumer Reports survey (June 2012) said 800,000 minors were harassed or cyber bullied on Facebook. Because social media has become so widespread it has become a breeding ground for cyberbullying. Facebook is the leading social networking site for bullying. Twitter doesn’t have as big of a problem as many of the other sites due to the way it is set up. However, Ask.FM (has caused serious problems among teenagers, resulting in bullying behavior that has been difficult to stop (Social). SnapChat can also contribute to the bullying problem by creating pictures that make fun of other individuals (Social). Because of the ability for anyone to log onto these social media sites it can now take place with both adults and minors too. Facebook rules state that children under 13 are not supposed to be on Facebook. In 2011 Facebook closed about 800,000 underaged accounts. There is an estimated 5.6 million active accounts that are still owned by underaged kids (Social). Because of a maturity issue, one million children were harassed, threatened or subjected to other forms of cyberbullying on Facebook during 2011(N/a Social). It’s not just a rumor, even adults get bullied too. I’m sure you heard about the CBS news anchor, Jennifer Livingston. On national tv she called out the person who was bullying her about her weight over email and social media. She was very
Adults are easily accessible to the goods and bads on social media, compared to children that are less capable to realize what is convenient for them. As a result, children have become victims of cyberbullying via social media. One of the major problem of cyberbullying had to do with the fact that “[t]he Internet provides more than ample opportunities for children to bully one another anonymously. Kids can embark on impressive and terrifying bullying campaigns, drawing in dozens of other completely anonymous children. Even a child who never does anything risky online is at risk of being bullied”, (Woda,2015, p.32). Children are expose to more cyberbullying in social media than in their normal everyday lives. According to Woda Tim, (2015) “a 2013 Pew Research Center study, indicates that 20.8 percent of kids ages eight to ten report that they have been cyberbullied at least once in their life, while 88 percent of social media-using teens say they have witnessed someone being mean or cruel on a social media site”, (32). Parents should focus more when their kids are using phones or computers in the house and it should use in public areas of the house, where parents can be aware of what their kids are doing in social media. They must use a “Parental intelligence” with their children and know that kids are the more vulnerable to be involved in cyberbullying. It is painful to see how everyday in the news kids are committing
Thomas J. Billitteri’s “Cyberbullying” sees social media as a cause of bullying and states out of the teenagers using social media, forty percent have a least once claimed to have been cyber bullied. Child advocates view the incivility from television reality shows to the political arena as growing to a point where youth have learned it acceptable to humiliate other people as a form of entertainment. This attitude is commonly found on commentary sections of social media and news websites. The article points out the responsibility social media sites takes in contributing to and preventing cyber-bullying. Working with individual states and law enforcement, Myspace has tried to help to stop harassment and cyber-bullying. Meanwhile, the social media website Juicy Campus was solely made to spread gossip that is hurtful (Billitteri “Cyberbullying”).
Most of us have heard the saying “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me”. With today’s technology, that saying may no longer hold true. Studies show that in the past five years, online bullying has quadrupled (M. Ross, 3). The technology has given bullies a whole another proposal for their actions; virtual name-calling can have harsh effects on the security of kids and teens in today’s society. An online bully is someone who sends messages via technology, hides behind that keyboard and uses words or pictures to embarrass and bully their target.