My friend Laura is doign a show in NYC, so check it out if you’re down there: “Last night was my first performance in The Apple Tree, come and see it before it closes March 11th! The flowers in the picture are from Kristin Chenoweth (the sweetest gal and star of our show) and my mom and dad! An Apple Tree a day keeps unemployment away! YAY!”
Slashdot | MySpace Sued by Families of Online Predator Victims
MySpace is facing more lawsuits, as the victims of sexual predators have filed suit against the social site and parent corporation News Corp. In total, four families from across the U.S. have joined together after their underage daughters were abused by men they met via MySpace. MySpace has responded to past allegations by putting in place educational efforts and partnerships with law enforcement. The company is also developing technologies to allow parents to have some measure of access to their child’s account
This suing is a great thing, IMHO. Of course parents have a responsibility. And children should be virtually street-proofed. But technologies have to provide those tools to allow for parents to do the best job. And it is too eash for developers to claim neutrality. And it is all to easy to wake them up with recourse to the courts.
I have a bias, because I train educators in how to use technology with young children. My personal opinion is that leaving children online without an adult knowing what’s going on is a problem. Like leaving them at home with guns before someone got the idea of locked cabinets and saftey, or putting labels on products.
I like what Second Life is doing, keeping spaces separate, it’s a good idea. It reminds me of Amy Bruckman’s work with MOOsecrossing at MIT in the 90s. In order for me to have access to a space that had children in, lots of paperwork needed to be done. In real life, to work with children, I have to have a criminal background check done, as do all my students. Only seems reasonable.
SO, how could software and technology help make children safer WHILE encouraging parents to be involved with use? Well there are many options. I would consider requiring some form of identity ID for these sites, but one that protects identity from casual observances, while keeping files that would ensure a contiguous relationship between the person online and the person irl. Personally, I think it is just fine for someone to pretend what they are not. But do they have the right to do so without it being known? What if, for example, a youth under the age of 18 wants to pretend she or he is older. Well, that’s well and good. In a blog, it is easy to see through this as soon as you read back on posts and see how the narrative plays out over time. And if not, you know that you’re just reading people’s stories, not reading them. But this sort of thing doesn’t really exist in myspace. It is more of an interactive self-promotional tool. It is a self-marketting space. It is all hype without much space for depth or content. Of course that’s why younger folks, with out much depth or content, like it. The mall rather than the library. But, to contextualize the digression, if there was a screen widget that merely flagged someone as ‘not what they seem’ we could have a mental marker that though we may interact with this individual as per their persona, we would realize the socially constructed nature of that persona. You might not think that this is necessary, because we know that all online identity is constructed, and is at best a filtered representation of the self. But this is learned. And when relative newbies go online and present themselves as they think they are, more like who they want to be seen as, they fall into the trap of seeing others as being as they appear. And a little blinky light identifying people as ‘not what they seem’ when their online persona differs from their stored data doesn’t stop one from identity workshopping, but it does provide a reminder that things are not what they seem.
Another interesting possibility would be parental reports. A parent getting a report of who the child has talked to being made available, not necessarily what is said, but that something was said. I had this experience where I was conversing with a very young family member. I let it be known that though I would respect this individual’s privacy, if anything went wrong or I thought this persona’s health or saftey was compromised, I would inform parents and authorities. That sense of ‘pretty good privacy’ to re-purpose the term, is what I’m speaking towards. Respecting the social rights of children to communicate, but recognize that online communication should have a monitoring feature that keeps track of who is talking to whom, when children are involved.
Children are not a parent’s sole responsibility, they are a shared social responsibility, at least in the parts of the world where we appreciate social support networks, universal healthcare and equitable educational opportunities. We want children to be cared for, loved by their parents and families, educated and kept as safe as possible… without so restricting their activities that they lose the opportunity to grow.
We allow the child to go to a rock concert, but they go with a monitoring adult. We let them go on camping trips, but we send them with trained guides. We let them fly alone, but airlines have mechanisms in place to see that they get to the other end in the hands of the appropriate person. Now to say that we don’t need a mechanism to ensure that children enjoying the freedom and dynamic interactions of myspace, is like letting your children throw a house party while the adults are on holidays.
We can keep children safe online, as long as we recognize that we have the right to know that someone we’re interacting with is either who they say they are, or that they are different from who they say they are. We don’t need any more verrification than that.
I have always kept the rule of thumb that anyone I’m talking to online, who is not someone I know IRL, is a short bald guy in his mid-40s (i.e. me), and I tell students that they should assume that everyone they run into online is probably a short bald guy in his mid-40s too. Until proven otherwise.
But, you know how hard it is to build a second life avatar that’s short, bald and mid-40s? They just don’t make social software for all.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
