Signed up my 9-year-old for YourSphere. YourSphere is a “safe” social network. They block the hideous element. Once you reach the age of 18, you’re done. It’s for kids. I once interviewed its founder, Mary Kay Hoal, and called it, “Facebook training.” She didn’t argue.
The first thing I noticed about YourSphere is that, as a parent, my visibility to my kid’s activity on the network is instantaneous, comprehensive and absolute. There is nothing–nothing–Goof is going to say or have said to her that I won’t know about so long as I log in.
Goof, being nine years old, has no issue with this. She thinks I’m pretty cool for arranging this for her (and she has learned to laugh about the fact that I call her, “Goof.”) She’s written a blog post (about her little brother–he approved), joined a “sphere,” which is an area of interest (very much like a “lens” on Squidoo), played games, watched music videos and left comments on other posts in search of “friends.” She’s concerned about my threat to disallow her from dating until she’s 30 and to accompany her on all dates thereafter, but doesn’t bat an eye over my omniscience regarding her online activity.
Several months ago, I spoke to a group of eighth graders. One boy was apparently a whiz-bang hockey player. He was 14 and, like most of the other kids, had his own Facebook account. Like the rest, a requirement was that he “friended” his parents. Unlike the rest, he was being recruited already by area colleges and had Facebook “friend” requests from scouts and coaches. His question to me was, predictably, should he accept these requests?
The lad has little choice. A collegiate Athletic Director with a finite number of scholarships and a coach with limited roster space will do everything possible to ensure they have signed student-athletes that will represent the program well; who won’t distract them or the program with behavioral issues. Combine this with the growing spate of disciplinary actions employers are compelled to take against employees who act carelessly, recklessly or maliciously online and we can see what’s coming in social media: a requirement to submit to monitoring.
Understand: This isn’t like when we social media geeks argue over whether Twitter is still around in five years. Given that this level of access is the nature of an “administrator” of a Facebook Page or Group and that YourSphere provides it as a fundamental offering to parents, it would seem the code is already written. There’s little stopping this from happening tomorrow.
If my 9-year-old stood on a privacy principle, she’d have no social network account.
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