By Emilia Benton
By Emilia Benton
An article printed in the regional section of The New York Times last week detailed Facebook.com’s announcement that it plans to strengthen child safety warnings on the site, along with taking precautions to advance its process of responding to complaints about sexual or inappropriate content.
I found the following statement to be quite disturbing: “The Web site was misleading its users by promoting itself as a place where high school students and younger children are safe from adult sexual predators.” Younger children?! Since this statement clearly proves that Facebook is distinguishing high school students to be of a whole separate category, I take “younger children” to mean elementary and middle school-aged kids. Does anyone else see what’s wrong with this picture? Apparently Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg, along with the rest of “Team Facebook,” do not, so it’s necessary to spell it out for them: CHILDREN DO NOT BELONG ON FACEBOOK. Period.
Safety problems like these likely began when Facebook began allowing just anybody to join (meaning you didn’t have to prove that you were a student of any kind). I myself don’t “request the friendship” anyone I’ve never actually met in person before, but once in a while, random strangers do in fact “friend” me. I’m not referring to fellow students here at the University; I’m speaking of random people with either the name of a city or country as their “network,” or even no “network” at all. Most often, these strangers appear to be close to my age, but once or twice, these people have been creepy-looking guys closer to my dad’s age than my own, as evidenced by their pictures and listed information. Seeing as how I’ve never met any of these people in my life and would rather they not try to contact me, I tend to immediately hit “reject,” or, when I’m feeling particularly annoyed, I send them an “I DON’T KNOW YOU” message before rejecting and blocking them from even being able to look my name up again. This might sound harsh for the ones that claim to be close to my age, but, come on, how am I to know that they are really who they say they are? I would say that most of my peers are smart enough to have red flags go up if they were to get these strange requests; after all, we are adults.
Children, however, are much more impressionable, and if they are on social networking sites and haven’t had their parents talk to them about the dangers of cyberspace (in which case, I would guess that these parents don’t even realize that their children are using these sites), they likely won’t question anyone’s identity. Additionally, they probably also wouldn’t raise questions about the risks of giving their contact information to someone they don’t know, or, even scarier, the risks of arranging to go meet someone they “know” from chatting with them online.
In recent years, Facebook has added endless features and applications for members to utilize. You don’t have to be a genius to interpret this to mean that with its current user count of over 47 million, Facebook is desperately trying to catch up to MySpace’s 70 million plus users. Yes, “Team Facebook,” beating your competitor’s user count could result in achieving the amount of fame and news coverage MySpace has received. However, some of MySpace’s most memorable news coverage took place last July, when it announced that it had removed 29,000 convicted sex offenders from its site, which is obviously not something Facebook, among other existing social networking sites, should aspire to. Is matching MySpace’s user count at all costs, and possibly getting Facebook’s name dropped on one of the famous stings on Dateline NBC’s “To Catch a Predator,” as MySpace has, really worth it? I’m thinking not.
In my opinion, Facebook was perfect when I first joined during the summer before my freshman year here at the University, long before all the “bells and whistles” that come with today’s version of Facebook existed. Back then, Facebook was exclusively for college students; you even had to have a college e-mail address to prove your eligibility to join. The creators of Facebook even got the idea for its name from a college concept: before the social networking Web site age, many colleges would prepare a “freshman facebook,” (its presentation would be similar to that of a yearbook) to hand out to the incoming first-year students. These books would typically contain photos submitted by the students, along with brief bios including their hometowns, majors, interests, etc.
During that same school year, Facebook expanded to include high school students. This came as a mild annoyance to many college students who happened to like the exclusivity that the site used to have. Facebook could have stopped there, and should have also implemented an equivalent security tactic to having a college e-mail address in order to join. This never happened; instead, Facebook eventually just dropped the requirement of having to have a “network” at all. Had this key change not been made, the administrators of Facebook most likely wouldn’t be dealing its current lack of security.
According to the Times article, Facebook’s new safety measures will include clear announcements stating that it cannot guarantee the safety of those using the site. Additionally, Facebook will soon introduce methods for members to report sexually inappropriate conduct or content on the site, and such complaints would be dealt with within 24 hours of receiving them. This new complaint process will be monitored by an independent company that will report back to the office of New York state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s office. These changes were planned after New York state prosecutors revealed that they had been closely monitoring the site after investigators posing as teenage users received sexually suggestive messages from adult members just days after creating profiles, proving that Facebook’s claims to parents that the site was a safe alternative were inaccurate.
The Times article went on to say that, according to Facebook’s chief privacy officer Chris Kelly, the new measures Facebook is planning to enforce probably won’t make the site more restrictive or even limit who is eligible to join; they would likely do the opposite to succeed in attracting more users.
While I find this disheartening, implementing safety warnings is a step in the right direction. Attempting to cater to young children, however, most definitely is not.
Emilia Benton is a junior print journalism student. You may e-mail her at [email protected].
