Kids can sign up to smartphone apps... but they would need a college degree to read small print
YOUNGSTERS are signing up to smartphones apps with terms and conditions that only someone with a university education can understand, a startling study has found.
Research by the BBC found that reading the terms and conditions for some popular apps could take almost nine hours in all.
YouTube, Facebook and Twitter have minimum age limits on who can sign up for apps but the research found the language used is too difficult for children.
It comes as the Irish Government was forced in May to set the digital age of consent at 16 – with campaigners, led by the Irish Daily Mail, winning a victory in the battle to protect our children online. According to the BBC research, firms could be breaching European data rules requiring them to clearly spell out how they use personal data.
Several companies responded to the research by saying they were working on improving the ‘legibility’ of their legal documents by introducing easy-to-read summaries.
However, when using websites or apps such as Facebook, YouTube and Instagram, users must sign up to the company’s terms and conditions, which include agreeing to be bound by a privacy policy.
According to Britain’s communications regulator Ofcom, more than eight in ten children aged between five and 15 used YouTube last year.
The BBC carried out a readability test to work out the education level required to understand policies on 15 sites or apps. All ‘Consultation’: Leo Varadkar had policies that were written at a university reading level, and were more complicated than Charles Dickens’s A Tale Of Two Cities.
This is despite the fact that YouTube, Twitter, Snapchat, Google, Instagram, Facebook, Reddit and Apple can all be used by children.
British MPs have accused the technology companies of using the terms and conditions to ‘exploit’ users’ data.
Several of the companies that responded to the BBC emphasised they were constantly working on improving the legibility of their legal documents. Google, Twitter, Facebook, Amazon and Wikipedia all pointed to their bespoke privacy centres or easyto-read summaries, where users can find out more about how their data is used.
Google, Twitter and Facebook said additional controls for limiting how data is shared were easily accessible within their apps.
Here in Ireland, cyber-security expert Dr Mary Aiken told the Mail yesterday: ‘The problem is that combining certain wording and information that most of these social tech companies are legally bound to include is likely to be incompatible with the reading age of a child or even a young teenager.’
She said: ‘During our campaign to keep the Irish digital age of consent at 16, I actually analysed the terms and conditions of a social technology site using the Flesch Reading Ease test, which tells you roughly what level of education someone needs to be able to easily read a piece of text.
‘The terms and conditions readability score of the social tech company fell just below the Harvard Law Review – a publication many university students would find challenging to read.
‘This incompatibility between the reading age of young people and social tech terms’ legalese [or legal jargon] must be addressed.’
Dr Aiken said that the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation said that communications to individuals about their data must be ‘concise, transparent, intelligible and [in an] easily accessible form’.
She said these must also use ‘clear and plain language, in particular for any information addressed specifically to a child – the good news is that as behavioural scientists we can test readability’.
Parents, teachers and politicians have called for age restrictions on children owning smartphones.
However, last month Education Minister Richard Bruton responded by publishing a circular on the electronic devices that only required all schools to consult parents, teachers and students on the use of smartphones and tablet devices in schools.
In response, Fianna Fáil education spokesman Thomas Byrne expressed the frustration of many parents and child supporters when he dismissed the minister’s move as ‘wishy washy’ and called for tougher action.
Lately, Blennerville National School, outside Tralee, Co. Kerry, became the first school in the country to impose a ban on smartphone use inside and outside school – and many others are expected to follow suit.
The bold policy, agreed with parents, followed an 11-week trial among sixth class students which found that abandoning smartphones improved academic performance, friendships between pupils and the quality of family life. There are calls for other schools to follow.
But parents and teachers pointed out that it should not be left to them to do this and that legislation was needed. An Irish Daily Mail/Ireland Thinks Poll has already shown that most parents here want an age restriction and last month, French politicians voted to back a ban on smartphones in their schools.
‘Nine hours to read the conditions’