About sharing
Privacy is still important to teens and they need to learn how to protect themselves online... so ask before you post
GWYNETH Paltrow – who has 5.3 million Instagram followers – reportedly ran into a spot of trouble with her daughter, Apple Martin, when the 14-year-old called her out for posting a picture of her on social media. The incident has sparked a broader discussion about how much parents should share about their children online.
We are often wrongly told that young people don’t care about privacy. But parents, perhaps, have less to worry about than they might think – young people do tend to treat privacy responsibly. In fact, it is often parents who need to think more carefully about their online activities.
With more and more of our lives moving online, it is almost impossible to escape. Even schools are increasingly pushing children’s lives and data online. It’s easy to embrace the idea of facial recognition software being used at schools in the name of child protection, monitoring progress or improving pupils’ experiences, but data is increasingly being captured and stored without proper consent.
The world’s entire digital society is designed to manufacture consent and participation, and young people often have little choice but to engage.
Against this backdrop, it’s perhaps unsurprising that children are concerned about privacy. They just have different concerns. While adults might be focused on keeping their data private from corporations, governments, hackers or stalkers, young people are concerned about keeping their posts private from school and family members. And younger people are finding ever more innovative ways to gain the specific types of privacy they want.
They tend to become better at managing multiple identities and cloaking communications. They can use parallel accounts – such as “finstagram” (fake Instagram) profiles – to separate images intended for their private peer groups and their families. Young people are, unsurprisingly, adaptable and innovative in their use of technology.
Businesses often try to push data as the new oil – a commodity to be traded. But when thinking about groups with less power in society – including children – this model seems absurd. Instead, we should move towards seeing data in terms of identity. Proper consent should be sought and breaches viewed as a kind of identity theft. Under this understanding of privacy, Apple Martin would arguably be right to criticise her mother’s post.
Wanting to show off our kids shouldn’t contribute to a system that normalises surveillance and a lack of privacy. Parents shouldn’t be giving the impression that even those closest to them will exploit a young person’s data or identity. That will just prepare them for a lifetime of expecting to be bought and sold online. If anything, parents should be giving their children the tools to protect themselves.
It’s never too young to start. I have recently started asking my 3-year-old whether I can share pictures of him.
The Children’s Commissioner has also released 10 top tips for minimising children’s data footprints, including avoiding posts that can identify your child’s birthday or location and speaking to organisations about the data they collect on them and why. And there are some great organisations – such as Doteveryone, Carnegie UK Trust and the Electronic Frontier Foundation – that have useful information.
Teaching our children about consent is important in life, and online privacy should be no exception.
Benjamin is a post-doctoral researcher, School of Media Arts and Technology, Solent University