Safety on Digital Playgrounds

When my cousin was 5 years old, he posted his first viral TikTok video. He was playing on my aunt's phone and was recording different ornaments on their Christmas tree. He used a "viral" sound and uploaded this meaningless and horrible quality video to TikTok. His video received thousands of views. I have no idea what type of algorithm you had to be on to have my 5 year old cousin's videography pop up on your feed but whatever he did seemed to work! Luckily, his face was not in the video but he certainly was not old enough to be publicly posting on any social media platforms. 

Image Source: Pinterest

Personally, I do not think there will ever be a law implemented that will completely protect children from the dangers of the internet. The internet evolves too quickly with people who know how to use it all too well. It would be extremely difficult to have any sort of legislation that could keep up with this. In this introduction video that describes the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA), Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), and Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), one of the creator's main recommendations to teachers was to monitor devices even student devices in the classroom. Trying to keep students engaged and off their phones is a huge priority in my classroom, however, at what point are you infringing on a student's privacy when monitoring their individual phones? My stance has always been to put them away unless we are completing a Kahoot or something that requires the students to use their phones to scan a QR code. Looking over a student's shoulder to see who or what they are texting seems like a huge privacy violation to me. In the video, it seemed like this creator thought this was a necessary role of the teacher. How do we know the boundaries for monitoring high school students' personal devices? 

Turning 13 marks the start of a lot of things, you can watch a PG-13 movie, you will begin mood swings, finish middle school, and you will no longer be protected by COPPA. I think no matter the age that COPPA aims to protect that students will find a way around it. It is fairly easy to type in your birth year as a few years before yours in order to sign up for social media apps. How many of you know an iPad kid? Well I guarantee the YouTube account that they are watching videos on is linked to their parent's google account. This child would not be limited to "kid's content" because their account they are using to stream these videos is their parent's account. What seems to be a video of people playing with barbies could actually be extremely creepy and these children could be subjected to watching it even when their parent is "monitoring" their viewing. Now it brings up the interesting question of who is to blame the algorithm, COPPA, or the parent?

 

Image from YouTube COPPA settlement

So how do we protect children from the outrageousness of the internet? The short answer is we can try but ultimately we will fail at some point. It is all too tempting to lie about your age to gain access to a platform. It is also all too easy for a child to accidentally be subjected to content on someone else's device that is not monitored for children. Ultimately young peoples' opinions are that we are way too exposed on social media as well....