Its a critical epidemic nowadays and it is spreading to our youth. People stay up for hours on end checking incessantly peoples' status, photos, wall posts, music updates, etc. just so they can find out a little bit more about a possible friend or foe.
Where does this disease spread and how harmful can it be? Well, unfortunately there are predators out there who contract this disease and have malintentions. This is where the line needs to be drawn.
According to a very prestigious research institution, surveys show statistics like these:
Do you know what your kids are publishing on the World Wide Web?! Because I have a 14 yr old sister, and I barely know what she is up to...& I'm a part of her generation!
2 comments:
I think middle and high schoolers have a lot of freedom on the internet but are very ignorant when it comes to being responsible. It makes me think that facebook and myspace should have some sort of unspoken safe guards for kids under 16 (unspoken because obviously if people thought they would be restricted in any way they'd lie about their age). I don't know what these would be, but it seems like a good idea.
Facebook stalkers are very real, and there's no shortage of predators on these sites either.
If you're looking for a company that makes online safety it's number one priority, look at Nintendo. I remember trying to select a username while signing up for an account on their website. During registration the username, which was the only piece of account information ever made public, was validated against a large database of names to make sure that it did not resemble a real name in any way. The site also compared your username to your e-mail address and prevented any similarities.
If you were under 13, you had to provide a parent's e-mail address before you could sign up. They would request permission to allow you to create an account.
That was many years ago when people were much more careful about online privacy.
Nintendo is still trying to keep people safe today, however. Some even say they've gone overboard by providing online Wii gamers with no profile or personally identifiable information. They are simply assigned twelve digit "friend codes" which are often clumsy to exchange.
See friend codes on Wikipedia.
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