Issues and tissues
I have a new pet peeve.
I live in this town where the average IQ is meant to be a good bit above the norm. I have been playing the myfacespacebook game lately, particularly facespace. And it’s all “HOT” amongst the thirties/forties crowd who didn’t catch onto it lo all those many years ago when it first hit. ( What’s that? All of five now or something? )
What I’ve noticed is, that (a) this is geared to having you use your real name. (b) because these people are in their thirties and forties many of them have young children. (c) A huge percentage of them are posting their profile pictures posed with their children, or as their children, or putting photographs of their children in their photo albums frequently with the child's real name.
DO NOT EVER PUT YOUR CHILD’S PHOTOGRAPH/NAME ON THE INTERNET!!!!!!
My question is this, why would this feel magically safer than any other internet venue? Even if your profile is set to private, if you have a picture of yourself posed with your child as your profile foto THEY now have your child’s last name, usually town of residence and if you are in the phone book, now your address. From that all manner of further information can be extrapolated. For instance, the likelihood of what school that child goes to. Potentially records about you or your child depending on how internet savvy THEY are. The list goes on but name, address and school is horribly, horribly dangerous.
The other issue being that even if you are private and you don’t have your child in your profile picture, if you have a wide range of friends from business, or wide social networking you really don’t know those people that well. Do you really want relative strangers knowing much of anything about your child?
You are supposed to be really clever people. What are you thinking? Yes I have a picture of myself as a four year old for one of my profiles. But it’s me, not my non-consenting child, it’s not under my real name, and even if it was and someone came looking to prey on that four year old person they would be in a big old can of whup ass and finding it quite difficult to put the Alpo back in the can.
I think the level of naiveté here is much higher than I expected, and the actual level of sophistication is much lower than these folks think they are operating from.
Labels: Anthrophobia, Blowin' Stuff Up, Exploitation, Internet Trends, Myspace, Sociology
posted by Stella Magdalen @ 8/18/2008 12:21:00 PM
5 Comments:
Any "parent", who actually has time to use facebook/scrapbook or other "electronic bathroom walls" (aka the "Internet") and include their children's pictures and any other very easily accessible information, is beyond naive; they're dangerously negligent and just plain stupid ... but then judging from our culture for at least the last 20 years, I think about 60-80% of all parents raising kids these days 17 and under are certifiably insane (negligent, too permissive, etc.).
how many kids do you have, anonymous?
--b
OK I think we have a basic misunderstanding occurring here.
The place I am coming from is a scared and panicky feeling of TREMENDOUS concern for children as potential victims of becoming missing and exploited children. I have, several times on this blog, already demonstrated that I have a total bee in my bonnet about missing and exploited children. I was a missing and exploited children subsequently I feel that I am entitled to excessively freak out about this.
Yes, I definitely used strong, imperative language in trying to underscore my concerns. I did not however, use naive in a pejorative sense but rather in a concerned fashion, to try to shed light on something that I am afraid is being overlooked.
I have no issue with a parent having or simply taking, time to have a social life of their own, outside of some bullshit, overblown, social standard that is usually completely hypocritical, as to what constitutes a "proper" parent.
I find that the amount of parental negligence is percentage wise, pretty much the exact same as it was in the sixties, the twenties, the eighteen hundreds, and a thousand BC. That, much like the ability to choose ones diet, the spaciousness to cast aspersions on people enmeshed in sociological phenomena frequently comes from a place of privilege. I was not casting aspersions. I was attempting to point out that the sophistication of technology is growing faster than our ability to understand its social implications. I am begging for people to consider this because I happen to have a personal phobia about this particular subject.
In other words, this is way more about me than calling down wrath or judgement on someone.
I did not scathe anyone or call them out pejoratively. And most of all I certainly did not post for the benefit of the only person who posts here under the cloak of anonymity to grind their ax about some new topic having been previously shot down for doing it about english usage.
I posted for the benefit of children, who, while I don't have any and don't really dig them so much as an large entity, are entitled to every form of civil liberty and advocacy available to them as they are generally not allowed to influence much as their own advocates.
Do see the distinction here Anonymous? I am not trying to trash parents, I am attempting, albeit possibly slightly offensively, to advocate for children. Not because I'm personally offended by some personal or parenting style. I fully recognize that I have no rights to never be offended. I just think that protecting children's civil liberties outweighs my own desires where, occasionally, I'll try to not offend others.
thanks for your concern on behalf of
kids, stella...nicely put!
anon...i want to know where you obtained
those percentages.
-b
Well, for what it is worth don't worry about my kid. I do have some photos of her on Facebook but they are friends only and everyone I have as a friend is either a relative, a long standing friend of the family that already know all about us, or people way overseas like yourself who I judge to be good people and not a threat. There is no way from anything I have ever said online that anyone could guess which school she goes to. Wellington has lots of schools. Also we are not in the phone book. We are unlisted and in any case she doesn't have the same surname as me. I'm very careful about who I trust with personal information, I'm quite paranoid about the risk of abuse and my daughter is always very carefully supervised.
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