  | Issue: | Europe II 2015 |
| Article no.: | 2 | |
| Topic: | Privacy issues in social networking: Please share (because we care) | |
| Author: | Sonia Livingstone Elisabeth Staksrud, | |
| Title: | Professor, OBE, LSE / Associate Professor & Head of Studies at the Department of Media and Communication | |
| Organisation: | LSE/ University of Oslo | |
| PDF size: | 236KB |
About author
Sonia Livingstone is a Professor in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE. She is author or editor of nineteen books and many academic articles and chapters. She serves on the Executive Board of the UK’s Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS), for which she is the Evidence Champion. She was awarded the title of Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2014 ‘for services to children and child internet safety.’ She leads the project, Preparing for a Digital Future, which follows the recently-completed project, The Class, both part of the MacArthur Foundation-funded Connected Learning Research Network. She directed the 33-country network, EU Kids Online, funded by the EC’s Better Internet for Kids programme, with impacts in the UK and Europe. She gave a recent TEDX talk on How children engage with the internet.
Elisabeth Stakisriud, PhD, is Associate Professor & Head of Studies at the Department of Media and Communication, University of Oslo, researching censorship, media regulation, children and online risk. She is also deputy chair of The National Committee for Research Ethics in the Social Sciences and the Humanities in Norway. She has since 2001 initiated and coordinated several international projects on online research and is in the management group for the EC funded 33- country European project EU Kids Online. Her most recent books include “Children in the Online world: Risk, Regulation, Rights”, “Towards a better Internet for children?”, and a book on Digital bullying.
Article abstract
Children are increasingly engaged in a social networking environment that pays little heed to its own ethical responsibility, too readily shifting the goal posts in the rules for displaying personal information, altering privacy norms, or newly connecting people who don’t know each other and feel no culpability regarding each other. At the same time, society calls ever louder for children themselves to act responsibly. Is this fair, and is it feasible, when the adults (both individuals and companies) who are supposedly their role models so often – and now so visibly – act differently?
Full Article
The enticing invitation to online intimacy is presented daily to many young people through the constant, caring enquiry of “what’s on your mind?”/”How do you feel” (Facebook), “what is happening” (Twitter), and “share your life with friends and family (Instagram). It represents not only an invitation to use the service, but to share because we care. Thus, sharing personal information, private thoughts and intimate pictures is presented and perceived as something positive. The social networking sites (SNS) want to know the real you, or so they say. Meanwhile, for many young people, the sharing of personal information through SNS holds out the hope of better control over their own narrative at a time of identity flux and uncertainty.
Using the internet to socialize with others is crucially about the performance of self: social media promise new ways to control the impression we give others, even to build the relationships we wish to have and become the person we wish to be. For adults it can be about pictures of smiling children on a ski trip, “check-in” at restaurants and travels, updates about pleasant things you have done – hence all those photos of us energized, happy and with a clean house and romantic partner, rather than tired, with dirty floors, absent partner and miserable children. For children and young people, the tension between the ‘real’ self and hoped-for self can be equally if not more intense, as new and fast-shifting forms of peer pressure must be navigated online and offline, in often ambiguous circumstances – especially in relation to what’s public, private, or something in between.
The EU Kids Online project has researched children’s online risk and opportunities in 33 European countries (www.eukidsonline.net). We have observed how SNS have influenced not only how children use the internet for socialisation and leisure, but also how they use it to express and represent themselves to their peers (see http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/35849/) – not in a false manner, but in a search for identity, for opportunities to experiment with the self, or for authenticity and intimacy. In 2010, after the use of SNS had increased dramatically, we asked children aged to compare their online experiences with their offline experiences. We found (see http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/33731/) that:
• Half (50%) of those aged 11-16 across Europe say it is a bit or very true of them that they find it easier to be themselves on the internet than when with other people face-to-face.
• Nearly half (45%) say they talk about different things on the internet than when speaking to people face-to-face.
• One third (32%) say that they talk about private things online that they do not discuss face-to-face.
On the one hand, such SNS activities may facilitate beneficial outcomes. But they may also increase the risk of privacy violations or coercive or hostile interactions. Drawing the line between these two – in terms of young people’s activities, and for those advising them – is far from straightforward. One dimension of contact and conduct risks that particularly challenges policy makers is that these in part rely on children’s agency and participation. Without necessarily blaming them – indeed, usually one would celebrate youthful agency, this may lead children to adopt risky or even deliberately risk-taking behaviours, sharing intimate information online. In short, sharing and “being one true self” online also makes you (more) vulnerable.
We also find this type of staging in social media interaction between users to be both positive and negative. So bullying, as an example, is not just about the conflict between two (or more) people, or about one person repeatedly harassing another. It can also be about the audience – how others perceive netizens, silently observing or actively commenting on the action. If we look to the offline world, a consistent finding in the literature on aggression and bullying is that children who morally agree that it is okay to harass others are themselves more likely to bully others. A school culture where children feel that bullying is not taken seriously can be interpreted as an acceptance of such behaviour, which in turn opens the way for more people to bully. Similarly, a digital culture where online harassment is prevalent gives tacit acceptance to such behaviour, as well as lowering the expectations that someone will (or should) intervene to make a difference. And a digital culture where your own personal as well as intimate information is constantly under pressure, constantly encouraged as an opportunity for display and, then, collected, systemized and used for commercial and/or political purposes does not, in turn, inspire respect for the personal information of others.
Our point is that children are increasingly engaged in a social networking environment that pays little heed to its own ethical responsibility, too readily shifting the goal posts in the rules for displaying personal information, altering privacy norms, or newly connecting people who don’t know each other and feel no culpability regarding each other. At the same time, society calls ever louder for children themselves to act responsibly. Is this fair, and is it feasible, when the adults (both individuals and companies) who are supposedly their role models so often – and now so visibly – act differently? In figuring out how to best to support young people in becoming good digital citizens, our EU Kids Online research provides some helpful pointers:
1) Developing safety skills encourage other skills, and more skills are associated with more activities online. So, teaching children to be safer need not curtail and may even encourage online opportunities rather than restrictions. (see http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/33733/)
2) Online and offline vulnerability are interrelated. Children with more psychological problems suffer more from online as well as offline risks. Promoting internet access among parents and sufficient digital skills among parents and teachers is crucial. (see http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/48115/)
3) Children who grow up in socially disadvantaged families often find it difficult to take advantage of the opportunities offered by media or to cope adequately with the risks that they might encounter while using them. Therefore every societal stakeholder needs to develop approaches that enable all citizens to use media for actively participating in society. (see http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/57878/)
4) Bullying and online harassment has serious and long term consequences. Supporting both those who have been bullied and have bullied others online will decrease the occurrence and consequences of online. (see http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/39601/)
But how? Having cumulated research on children and online risk and opportunities in Europe for almost a decade, our key policy recommendations to policy makers – especially to governments and industry providers (see http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/59518/) – are as follows:
GOVERNMENTS should:
• Coordinate multi-stakeholder efforts to bring about greater levels of internet safety and ensure there is meaningful youth participation in all relevant multi-stakeholder groupings;
• Review adequate legislative provision for dealing with online harassment and abuse;
• Review adequate legislative provisions for securing the integrity of personal information for underage users in regard to commercial exploitation.
• Ensure provision for youth protection in traditional media can also support online safety provision;
• Continue efforts to support digital inclusion of all citizens while providing support for socially disadvantaged parents and households;
• Promote positive online content, encouraging broadcasters, content developers and entrepreneurs to develop content tailored to the needs of different age groups
INDUSTRY PROVIDERS should:
• Ensure ‘safety by default’ and enable customisable, easy-to-use safety features, accessible to those with only basic digital literacy;
• Ensure age limits are real and effective using appropriate methods of age verification where possible and accompanied by sufficient safety information;
• Implement tools so that under-18s can remove content that may be damaging to their reputation and/or personal integrity.
• Ensure commercial content is clearly distinguishable, is age-appropriate, ethical and sensitive to local cultural values, gender and race.
• Support independent evaluation and testing of all specified safety tools and features.
• Develop a shared resource of standardized industry data regarding the reporting of risks.
When social media ask you to share, it should also facilitate privacy protection to show that they care. This includes respect for users’ privacy and personal information, and ensuring that this is not misused.
Consistently we find that what keeps children safe, sound and digitally resilient is not the lack of use, but more use. It is not the prevention of experiences or content, but the prevention of unethical behaviour and the encouragement of self-efficacy, respect for others and the respect and care of precious digital goods – including personal information – that makes SNS use a positive opportunity rather than a risky activity.
