Net giants like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat must give kids TLC… not tricky T&Cs
AS a loving mum you would expect me to make the safety of my kids paramount – and I do.
It’s effectively my everyday priority, much to the frustration of four very free-spirited young beings.
But whereas once it was making sure they didn’t break an arm or talk to strangers, now it’s their digital safety that concerns me the most.
Kids today are living their lives online. Three- to four-year-olds spend more than EIGHT HOURS a week online.
For teenagers it’s worse — they log on for up to 20 hours a week online. That’s almost three hours a day.
We know this because the Children’s Commissioner, Anne Longfield, tells us so in a chilling new report.
As she puts it: “Children spend half their leisure time online. The internet is an incredible force for good but it is wholly irresponsible to let them roam in a world for which they are ill-prepared, which is subject to limited regulation and which is controlled by a small number of powerful organisations.”
If she makes it sound sinister then it’s because it is — and has confirmed many of my suspicions and fears.
It's about time firms like Facebook took responsibility for their corporate behaviour... they are pimping out our kids for their own financial gain
Our kids think they are savvy but in truth they are really rather green and need protection.
Indeed, perhaps the Growing Up Digital report’s most sinister finding is how this “small number of powerful organisations” exploit their most vulnerable users.
It reveals that the altars at which two of my children pray — Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat — make them agree to numerous clauses that directly benefit the billionaires of Silicon Valley but which are effectively “hidden” in baffling terms and conditions.
They, rather terrifyingly, waive users’ rights, allowing the data they post, such as Instagram pictures, to potentially be sold on.
Take my tech-obsessed brood. My youngest, aged eight and a half, does not remember a time without internet, tablets, iPads, phones and apps. This is his world.
Meanwhile, my 16-year-old and 12-year-old daughters are hooked on Facebook and Instagram. But, and hopefully they will not mind me saying this, they are utterly clueless.
Yes, they’re savvy in their life of doing “dabs”, text slang, emojis, etc, but have they even read any T&Cs in their life?
According to the report, of a group of 13-year-olds who read the T&Cs for Instagram, not ONE of them understood it.
It is about time firms such as Facebook — already under fire for paying minuscule tax — stepped up to the plate and took responsibility for their corporate behaviour which, despite their declarations of terms, means they are effectively pimping out our kids for their own financial gain.
How hard would it be for a company that can turn a mind-bendingly complex algorithm into a user-friendly app to simplify and condense their T&Cs so that a teenager understands it?
But then Facebook is used to abdicating responsibility. When its circulation of fake news in the US election was exposed, founder Mark Zuckerberg risibly claimed it was a tech firm rather than a media company.
Part of the problem, of course, is trust. A blind trust that comes from assuming that these companies who promote a message of caring and sharing and connecting the world, making it a better place for us, are actually doing that.
And, on a more worrying level, there is the trust that everything and everyone on the internet is legit.
My girls effectively think that if something is online, it’s true. And if someone is online, they are who they say they are. Despite me impressing on them most forcefully that this just isn’t so.
So I’m all for Longfield’s proposal for “digital citizenship” classes — compulsory online/digital education from the age of four.
It is vital that kids are taught to navigate the web properly, to know where danger lies.
And ideally these skills should be taught from a “neutral source” rather than by their parents who may — like me — feel out of their depth.
I’m excited that the report also calls for sweeping regulation of social media — a long-overdue proposal and one which must go some way to combating the bullying and grooming that keeps most parents awake at night.
Of course we have a responsibility too. Only we can reduce the time our children spend online.
I’m already trying. I face a daily battle — a twice-daily battle, in fact, against my millennials’ online activity. I am constantly ranting, pleading, asking, telling them to get off the internet.
This digital world is running the very great risk of ruining our family life. I long for our cohesion as a family, they long for time with their cyber family.
So we have strict rules: We eat meals together — always — and there are NO devices at the dinner or breakfast table, without exception.
My children don’t understand why I make such a fuss but I genuinely feel that my family life is disappearing before my very eyes.