Facebook Launches Privacy Campaign to Protect Teens.
Facebook Launches Privacy Campaign to Protect Teens.
Facebook, under pressure to educate teenagers on staying
safe on the site, has teamed up with 19 US attorneys general to launch a
privacy public awareness campaign.
Facebook
and the AGs announced the campaign on Monday during a National Association of
Attorneys General (NAAG)-sponsored conference devoted to digital privacy,
according to CFOWorld.com.
Teaching
teenagers about data privacy is going to be an uphill battle.
Facebook
has a tough enough row to hoe when it comes to staying relevant with this
demographic, given that many youth today find Facebook
flat-out boring.
On a far
more serious front, those youth who still use Facebook are using it and other
social media for ends that too often turn out anti-social at best or even fatal
at the most extreme.
That
includes viral shaming of young women through Facebook and other social
media, which has led to suicide among multiple teenaged girls: 15-year-old Audrie Pott, 17-year-old Rehtaeh Parsons, and 15-year-old Amanda Todd
The privacy
campaign will include state-specific public service announcements and other
informational resources, such as an "Ask the Safety Team" video
series, in which Facebook's safety team answers some of the most popular
questions the site has been asked over the past few years as its team has traveled
the country, according to CFOWorld.
This is a
noble effort.
But I must
say, these do not strike me as things to which teenagers will pay any
attention, and that's unfortunate.
Of course,
complicating privacy matters further are new, advanced features such as Facebook's Graph Search tool that
make figuring out privacy settings harder than ever, even for those who bother
to learn about privacy settings to begin with.
The privacy issues that rose with Graph Search were
particularly acute when it came to the issues of what people can find out about
minors.
Facebook in
February went so far as to post an explanation of how
Graph Search works for those between the ages 13 and 17, saying that many
things teens tend to do on the site - such as add information to timelines or
share status updates - can only be shared with a maximum of Friends of Friends.
Ditto,
Facebook said, for "certain searches that could help to identify a young
person by age or by their location," for which "results will only
show to that person's Friends, or Friends of Friends who are also between the
age of 13-17."
But
information being limited to Friends, or Friends of Friends, doesn't provide
much privacy. That limitation won't prevent high schoolers from passing around
nude photos or other content that may lead to harassment, stalking, bullying,
or damage to a young person's future.
In the end,
every individual Facebook user must accept responsibility for the information
they share on the social network.
It's good
of Facebook to try to train teenagers to be savvy about privacy. Not to be
cynical, but good luck with that.
It's hard
enough to get people of any age to look
into shutting down their Facebook privacy settings. But start waving
information resources at young people and you can almost hear the thumb
stampede as they toggle over to Instagram, WhatsApp, or whatever's now
considered hipper.
I hope I'm
wrong.
I hope that
parents, teachers and others responsible for young people will take advantage
of the new privacy materials and can better protect their loved ones from harm
because of this privacy education campaign.
I hope that
they can make a difference and save teenagers from the horrible fates that too
many young victims have already suffered.
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