The headline invites ridicule. A more descriptive headline would be, "That young people ignore social media age limits exposes them to bullying."
When I was a 6th grader, I played Diablo II online. A player named "I-Dupe" told me he'd duplicate my items and give them to me. I thought he had a program to do this.
I gave him my items, and he left the game. My items were not duped; I was. I bawled, and ran downstairs and yelled to my parents. They offered consolation and advice ("be careful online"). But you can tell my parents couldn't ameliorate my hurt feelings.
If I could wave a magic wand, I'd turn this situation--wherein parents have to cope with the relationship between their kids and the web--to one where parents can do something about it. The ridicule I've seen in HN's comments just now demonstrates that age requirements don't work and appear disingenuous. I'm also skeptical of what someone from UK Safer Internet Centre said, "It's so important that we show children what other things they can do using digital technology that are engaging, creative and age-appropriate. It's about showing them what else it could be and inspiring them with that." When we make things for people "less" than us (young, less-tech-literate, etc), we often make something crappy[0].
[0] http://paulgraham.com/javacover.html relevant excerpt: Like the creators of sitcoms or junk food or package tours, Java's designers were consciously designing a product for people not as smart as them.
This "smart people creating for people less than them" problem is exacerbated with students. You can convince almost any unemployed adult to learn Java by telling them it's profitable, even if they can detect condescension. But students are just as good at detecting condescension, and these "engaging, creative, and age-appropriate" tools are probably made to occupy students' time, not make them money.
Exactly the same thing happened to me. Diablo II, around 6th grade, asking someone to dupe an item, I gave him my items, he left the game, I was upset.
If I could wave a magic wand, I wouldn't change a thing. It was the first time I learned that not everyone could be trusted all the time, and it seems to me it was a pretty good time and place to learn it. Just how far off would you want to push that inevitable lesson?
Oh man, you guys are bringing back some highly emotional memories for me. Mine was slightly different, but with the same result. In my case it was Diablo I and rather than giving away my items, some guy tricked me into taking a town portal that led to a tight room packed full of higher level mobs that he had kited back to the portal. Of course, I died instantly. And in Diablo I, being killed by monsters (as opposed to being killed directly by another player) made you drop all of your equipment. Internet Jerk, being high enough level to handle the mobs, then popped in, killed everything, and stole my gear.
I was devastated at the time, but now I can look back on it and laugh. It was just a game and it definitely taught me some hard lessons about trusting people online. (And also some lessons about how creative people can be in exploiting weaknesses of a system.)
Exactly the same thing happened to me. Diablo II, around 6th grade, asking someone to dupe an item, he gave me his items, I left the game, he was upset. If I could wave a magic wand, I wouldn't change a thing.
I am reading the article and wondering why didn't they ask how many of these kids were actually bullying or trolling others online.
>If I could wave a magic wand, I'd turn this situation--wherein parents have to cope with the relationship between their kids and the web--to one where parents can do something about it.
They already can do something about it. They can actually teach their children how the world works, how to react to various situations, why blindly believing strangers is a bad idea, and maybe even (gasp) limit what their children are permitted to access on the internet! Shocking ideas, I know.
It is not a government's job to raise children - nor should it ever be.
As a parent, if my child came to me and told me this story, I'd have trouble not calling him a n00b and making fun of him. I wouldn't, but I would explain to him that he deserved to be ripped off for trusting strangers online. Your parents shouldn't be able to fix everything for you. I don't think you're parents should have done anything.
You learned a valuable life lesson. If anything getting ripped off online and learning this lesson was safer than getting ripped off in a dark alley over some magic beans.
If they had done something, what would you have learned? If I cry hard enough, everything gets fixed? That leads to uselessness.
You learned two valuable lessons that day on Diablo. 1) don't be too trusting, 2) crying does not fix things in real life
I think kids should be exposed to experiences like that. They should be given guidance, not bans.
Take alcohol for instance: in Europe people start drinking very young (illegally). It's socially accepted as the norm that everyone knows happens. But for kids this is very hard to do of course.
As a result, college is a lot less ... shall we say exciting? By the time we have easy access to alcohol (money+legal) we already know how to treat it with some amount of respect.
> in Europe people start drinking very young (illegally)....
> By the time we have easy access to alcohol (money+legal) we already know how to treat it with some amount of respect.
I would suggest that early illegal drinking is a dangerous thing. It works as you say for the majority, but for a sizeable minority it causes serious problems both then and in the future. Overall it is a bad risk/reward situation IMO.
Legal early drinking while young more reliably has the effect you describe in my experience though.
I don't know about elsewhere in Europe, but in the UK while it is illegal to sell alcohol directly to anyone under 18 under any circumstances, or those 18+ if you have any reason to believe they are buying in order to supply a minor except under specific conditions, you can (at your discretion) knowingly sell it to a "responsible adult" who is buying for a minor (IIRC the cut-off here is 14+) if the drink is part of a sit-down meal in a properly licensed premises. This covers having wine or beer with a meal in a restaurant. Furthermore, in your private residence you can give alcohol (again at your discretion) to anyone older than 5. The "at your discretion" part is vitally important here, it is the caveat through which the seller/giver is liable for prosecution under child protection laws if they are seen to allow anything that might be dangerous to a minor or get the "responsible adult" judgement wrong, and is also the caveat that allows the seller/giver to say "no" for any reason (which they do not have any legal obligation to explain, and if the customer gets angry about the situation that is adequate reason for refusal on its own in addition to any other considerations).
I also think these experiences are important for people to learn. It is why I am enjoying the current discussions around the Dark Zone in The Division. It is a PvP enabled zone in an otherwise PvE game, with a harsh absense of repurcussions meaning personal resposibility is all that stands in the way of losing everything. Many people cannot handle that and want to blame others for their "bad" behavior. It is very similar to EvE but in a genre that is more popular with younger, more ideal folk.
Of course. Crying helps. Hell, I cry plenty of times when watching sappy movies.
But while crying helps, it doesn't solve.
At least not outside your immediate social circle. And even inside, only in passing as a request for help and support. Eventually you have to do something, or decide you don't care enough to solve the problem.
Children (maybe people in general?) should learn that doing is better than crying. In the case of Diablo, parents might do better to ask "So what are you going to do now? How are you rebuilding your character? Can you do it faster now that you have experience?" than to say "Oh you poor baby, that bully was super mean to you!"
One is empowering. The other is victimizing. Important difference.
Exactly. Have you seen "Inside out" the animated movie ? I thought it depicted the need to consider emotions and how they fit in the bigger picture quite well. I would recommend it for children and adults.
Especially the ability to get access to, say, beer legally earlier means you can drink lower percentage things, be accepted in the social circle, and test your limits.
So you learned a valuable lesson you'll never forget and all it cost you was a few items in a video game? I'm not sure the cost/benefit ratio gets better than that.
Exactly, I view this completely differently. You just learned an important lesson. Fuck up on the internet and you lose - there's no undo. This applies to many situations in life, there's not always someone there to protect you from your own poor judgement so it's best to train your judgement rather than trust by default. This same lesson not to trust people by default can now save you from malware, scams, counterfeit purchases with real money, etc. This was a very cheap way to learn the lesson.
I'm reminded of all the people who had money with pirateat40 when his ponzi scheme disappeared... he claimed 7%/week returns and some people still believed him and sent him real money.
EDIT: In this way the internet provides a very useful social playground where practical damage was minimized but still real enough to be felt. I think this sort of learning is perfectly fine and should be encouraged more, not less. Better to learn how things really work yourself than to be constantly relying on someone else to shield you - you sure don't want to be an adult who still doesn't get it.
It's also worth considering why we feel emotions. That emotional pain exists so we will remember it and avoid making similar mistakes in the future.
Children will get hurt, but they heal. You get a few scrapes and bruises while you're learning. Reasonable protections against catastrophe are important, but eliminating pain is a high bar to reach and it will come with a high cost. Not just a financial cost, either. It will cost children opportunities for excitement, joy and learning.
> This "smart people creating for people less than them" problem is exacerbated with students.
This is a great observation of a problem that extends throughout silicon valley. There is a fundamental problem with the way we design products that enables this "condescension," as you aptly put it. The problem is that "product people" design an "experience" for the nebulous "user". Instead of realizing that each user is also a person, with real experiences and a brain outside of the app, the designers fall into the trap of only thinking of each user within the context of their own app. The product designers ignore any experience that the user has outside of their own product, resulting in design choices that convey a tone of condescension to the user.
As you observe, this problem is particularly evident in education. The top offenders:
- Coding bootcamps
- "Learn to code" websites like codecademy
These products are not much different from the "guru" industry that peddles real estate and affiliate marketing eBooks to the "get rich quick" crowd. Someone searching "how to make money fast" is engaged in a slightly less sophisticated mindset than someone searching "how to learn to code fast," but the same psychological impetus leads to both searches. As a result, an entire industry has emerged to prey on those learning to code.
Personally, I learned to code through a combination of online tutorials and rudimentary reverse engineering. How does this website work? What powers this website? How can I replicate this? Oh cool, a tutorial... let me finish this PHP membership system and then add my own features!
I maintain this is still the best way to learn to code. Taking things apart and building small projects is the fastest learning method. The tutorials were all free and very raw. They came from different sources that all presented different opinions and frameworks for thinking about programming. I had to read between the lines. I had to think critically. There was no mindless interactive IDE simulator to click through. I only had the real world: a text editor, a hosted server to FTP my PHP files to, and a web browser. It was trial by fire.
Sure, coding bootcamps and codecademy have taught lots of people to "code"... but at what cost? What experiences have these people missed by learning through a structured, opinionated curriculum filtered through a product team? Has this method of learning created irreconcilable gaps in their understanding of programming?
When they discover teenagers smoke and drink - which also exposes them to ridicule, whether they do it or not - it's going to shock them. If federal law, physical ID verification, active law enforcement, massive fines to parents doesn't eliminate drinking and smoking, why would people expect simple age limits stop signing up online?
And yes, online activities open up an avenue for bullying. So does pretty much everything. We should work on that aspect, of preparing children for it and also cracking down on it.
Perhaps a good step for AI chat bots would be monitoring online chat services and learning to detect bullying and taking actions: block all communication, warn a guardian, etc. Detecting harassment could be achievable long before real intelligence is achieved. And detection lets the child, the parent, or the service take many actions in response.
Why do you think that preventing children from ever getting their feelings hurt is a reasonable goal? Did getting tricked on a video game really traumatize you that much?
In the pre-internet days, I had a watch that I adored. Swatch watch with a transparent face so you could see the movements. A kid asked me if he could borrow my watch one day, to see if he liked it. I said sure. After class, he disappeared. He told me he lost the watch. A few days later, he shows up to school with my watch and tells me his mom bought it for him. I was a big, nice kid who was always afraid to hurt someone. That was the moment when I was pushed past my limit.
I waited until after school and then beat the crap out of him until he admitted what he had done and got my watch back. It was my fault for being that naive. It was his fault for flaunting my naiveté in my face.
It's worth noting that a lot of these age limits are a result of COPPA, which is legislation that prohibits companies from tracking people under the age of 14 without parental permission.
When this law was first introduced, a site that I used heavily as a minor required me to get a permission form signed and faxed by my parents before they'd unlock my account -- while I actually got them to do this, it would have been faster and easier to create a new account with a fake age.
I think these laws need to be revamped, although because they only affect kids they're not really on anyone's radar (in the US, the deteriorating and underfunded school system is a more pressing problem). Companies end up tracking kids anyway through their parents, whether it's the "35-year-old female using Angry Birds" (actually their mother handing their phone to their kid on a train) or having your parents upload your baby photos to Facebook hours after your birth.
This is a bad title edit, if it was edited. The original title, "Safer Internet Day: Young ignore 'social media age limit'", at least focuses partially on the actual topic of the article, an event meant to raise awareness of online bullying. A better title edit would be "10-12 year olds report seeing, experiencing online bullying in spite of social media age limits".
But, you know what else puts youth at risk for bullying? Going outside. Going to school. Being different. Liking things other kids don't like. Being gay. Being black. Being asian. Etc..
Random trolls on the internet can do orders of magnitude less psychological damage to a kid than their actual peers can by excluding them from activities in the real world and making the state-mandated 9-5 they go to an experience they dread.
This sort of dominance behavior is likely a human evolutionary constant, but so are a lot of behaviors we've as a society decided are no longer acceptable. What will actually stop bullying is enforcing, across society and consistently in front of children, that it isn't acceptable to hurt other people to benefit yourself.
I'm sure virtually every educator knows this, because they're usually trained in child psychology. So if you see an "educator" saying that the thing we really need is an "internet safe zone" "for the children" you should know where their loyalties really lie.
And young people ignore age limits for everything else. Just ask how many people under 18 watch ultra violent movies and what not. Or how many Call of Duty fans are under 17 years old (read, probably most of them).
Or heck, how completely non effective COPPA is on internet forums. Seriously, the amount of people who care about it is maybe... 0.1% of the population?
And practically speaking, you will never avoid this. Any form of tick box or date of birth verification is faked in seconds, any credit card details will just be taken from a parent or friend's account. Just like real life really. If a kid can't buy something on their own, their parents will probably just buy it for them.
As for the claims of bullying and stuff... well sure. At least social media has a way of dealing with the issue (by banning accounts, blocking people from contacting each other, etc). That's ten times more effective than anything a school would ever do, especially given how the latter often just make the situation even worse by uneven enforcement and victim blaming.
And hey, it's at least easier to ignore bullies online than in the real world.
Does anyone think something based on something like SMOG readability to check grade level + something like uClassify [or some other machine learning API for age:text correlation] would go a decent way towards fixing this?
For sites that actually care about this sort of thing and aren't doing the legal minimum?
[i.e. Take a 500 word sample from the user over their initial posts, test it against SMOG to see if it meets a minimum grade level. Test it against a machine learning tool to see if it estimates reasonable age. If it doesn't pass, disable the account and ask for ID and/or parental consent form]
Well, it's all about plausible deniability. The people who run these sites know that minors are using them, and it would be cost-prohibitive to make it really hard for minors to use them.
So, instead, embed some text in your ToS and pretend to act shocked whenever confronted with direct evidence that people aren't complying with the ToS.
It's the same for porn. An "are you 18?" page isn't going to stop anyone, but it shifts the blame from the publisher to the consumer.
> An "are you 18?" page isn't going to stop anyone, but it shifts the blame from the publisher to the consumer.
That makes no sense, considering that someone under 18 is not able to enter into any contract (with the publisher) in most jurisdictions. compare: It would not be enough to ask "are you of legal age?" before serving alcohol to someone. Proof is required.
Your mistake here is missing the idea of "due diligence". Many laws (in the US especially) revolve around this concept. The basic gist is, has the concerned party taken "reasonable" (vague on purpose to adapt to evolving circumstance) action to comply with the law. In the instance of serving alcohol, everyone carries an id and carding is judged to be the level of "reasonable" action; in contrast, on the internet where access to identifying info is much sparser, user verification makes the cut.
It's not a contract being form, it's the company in question performing the minimum viable verification to protect themselves from liability.
On Reddit, for instance, I saw a discussion in /politics (by many, many users at the time) about why a 13 year old can still be just as mature and smart as someone over 18.
I'm in my mid 30s and the only reason anyone would say this is if they are close to that age or they want to have sex with someone that age (and justify it).
I disagree (and for the record, not because I want to have sex with someone that age.)
A 13 year old can be just as mature and smart as someone 18+, the reason the law exists is because it isn't the case nearly all of the time, and there's no simple way of judging on a case by case situation, so it's better to protect the 99(.9?)% of 13 year olds who need protecting.
This doesn't justify any adult having sex with a 13 year old, regardless.
When I was a 6th grader, I played Diablo II online. A player named "I-Dupe" told me he'd duplicate my items and give them to me. I thought he had a program to do this.
I gave him my items, and he left the game. My items were not duped; I was. I bawled, and ran downstairs and yelled to my parents. They offered consolation and advice ("be careful online"). But you can tell my parents couldn't ameliorate my hurt feelings.
If I could wave a magic wand, I'd turn this situation--wherein parents have to cope with the relationship between their kids and the web--to one where parents can do something about it. The ridicule I've seen in HN's comments just now demonstrates that age requirements don't work and appear disingenuous. I'm also skeptical of what someone from UK Safer Internet Centre said, "It's so important that we show children what other things they can do using digital technology that are engaging, creative and age-appropriate. It's about showing them what else it could be and inspiring them with that." When we make things for people "less" than us (young, less-tech-literate, etc), we often make something crappy[0].
[0] http://paulgraham.com/javacover.html relevant excerpt: Like the creators of sitcoms or junk food or package tours, Java's designers were consciously designing a product for people not as smart as them.
This "smart people creating for people less than them" problem is exacerbated with students. You can convince almost any unemployed adult to learn Java by telling them it's profitable, even if they can detect condescension. But students are just as good at detecting condescension, and these "engaging, creative, and age-appropriate" tools are probably made to occupy students' time, not make them money.