The backlash against Ask.fm in the aftermath of a spate of teenage suicides needs to give way to a discussion about how and why teenagers use privacy rich sites and are leaving Facebook in flocks.
If Facebook is losing out on the teenager market, then what solution is there for social media sites that are attracting more and more teenagers? There is a strong argument that we need to understand what is it about these alternative social media sites that drive teenagers to these types of platforms? Ironically, it may have a lot to do with ‘personal space’. Kids don’t want to share a platform with their parents. Kids want privacy and children have a right to privacy – and not just in the legal sense because it’s enshrined in Article 16 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which the UK has both signed and ratified.
What about the platform? Can social networking sites facilitate some sort of architecture that protects both children and their privacy? Ask.fm’s
terms and conditions require that users follow a certain code of conduct and focus on a set of behavioural norms when interacting on the platform. Specifically, it is against the T&Cs to “transmit or encourage the transmission of unlawful, harassing, libellous, abusive, threatening, harmful, vulgar, obscene or otherwise objectionable material of any kind or nature”. But how is that specific direction implemented in a site that has little to no moderation and oversight nor a ‘panic button’ to report abuse. Take for example the page featuring Rutgers University students’ crushes, as described in the 144-year-old student newspaper
The Tarqum:People submit confessions about their crush anonymously to an ask.fm account and
@ru_crushes tweets them for all to see on Twitter. The reporter goes on to write, “To be fair, the ask.fm page chides users for being too vulgar, warning that, ‘if you think the ones posted now are bad, you’d be surprised.’ I’m not surprised. People are weird. People are sexual. People want to share. People think weird and sexual things and then they share them. I am perplexed, though. Can’t we share on a higher level?”Secondly, as @stephenemm pointed out to me this morning, ask.fm has incredibly easy settings to use: “It’s incredibly easy. Click Settings, then ‘do not allow anonymous questions’.” The real question for us to be asking our teenagers is this: “Why do you like using anonymous questions and answering especially when you might get particularly hateful responses?” If we can address this we might find out that what I suspect all along: teenagers want privacy and will flock to networking sites where they will get it. If you want to know what your child is thinking about and caring about, and what they might be doing in their private lives, the best way, as the is to develop and foster the type of relationship with your child where they trust you enough to tell you.
