Can Facebook be trusted to protect your kids online?

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Friday, 22 July 2011 11:43

Opinion and Analysis

With Australia's Attorneys-General getting set to discuss not only the R18+ rating for games, but ways to make Facebook and other social networking sites safer for children, is it the responsibility of Facebook, parents or the Government?

Attorneys-General in Australia are getting together in Adelaide for a two-day meeting to discuss whether parents should be able to get access to their children's Facebook pages, whether Facebook should be an 1+ adults only affair and among other things will also discuss the an R18+ classification for today's games.

Of course, if the A-G's do decide that parent can see their children's Facebook pages, what will stop children from having one page their parents can see, updated with innocent stuff, and a second page that parents know nothing about, where are the real danger and true parent-free fun lies?

How would Facebook make its checks to ensure that the person who says they're XYZ's father or mother really is that person?

How would Facebook be trusted to implement such changes when it can't even keep under 13 year olds off its network as it is?

Part of the problem is that parents aren't exactly trusting of Governments these days either, and given Government's ability to mostly be reactive, rather than any real form of real proactivity, any Facebook regulation will be like closing the barn door after several million horses have already bolted.

Ultimately, it is the parent's responsibility to instil into their children a sense of responsibility, or right and wrong, of good and bad behaviour and of the need to do the right thing, even if you're being pressured by young peers to do the wrong thing.

Websites and Governments will never have the same absolute care for your children that you will, so why abdicate your parenting responsibilities and put it in the hands of a site that cares little for your privacy, or Government ministers that, when all is said and done, care little for you save your easily purchased vote come election time?

The A-G's will involve themselves in a lot of chin-wagging, and might even resolve that long-standing R18+ issue, but if any parent out there thinks the A-G's are going to definitely solve the 'Facebook problem' for them and absolve them of their parenting responsibilities, keep on dreaming.