Internet Safety
It is incredible how technologically savvy children can be at such young ages in this generation. I have experienced this first-hand; my cousin was playing games on my uncle’s iPad at the age of 3! Video games don’t appear harmful to children, but the use of the Internet is definitely a source of danger and invasion of privacy for young children who are aimlessly wandering the web. A recent NY Times article discusses the arising conflict, in Silicon Valley, regarding online privacy and safety for users under the age of 13. In the past, acts have been passed that allowed more regulation over children’s Internet activities and parental consent was necessary. Due to the rapid growth of online capabilities and frequent data collection of its users, privacy is very minimal. The Federal Trade Commission is now trying to formulate a solution that will lead to a healthier online environment for young children.
It is always dangerous for inexperienced children to be on the web in the first place because one click could lead to one wrong page. The Internet could be looked at as one huge information network, where nodes represent a page online, and each edge is directed starting from one page and leading to another. Because millions of pages exist and each link is directed to a new page, a user could end up anywhere on the web. Most websites are set up so the user could easily click back to the home page by clicking some version of a “home button”. This entails that one can reach all the links connected to the home page to make a strongly connected component, in which every page can reach every other page via one or multiple links or clicks. This way, young users are easily exposed to such an extensive amount of good or bad information on the Internet.
Users’ clicks and online activities are often monitored and as a result used for advertising purposes. As we have learned, advertisers, via search engines such as Google, use the pay per click, auction, or search behavior method. When young children Google whatever topic they’re curious about, an ad related to the keywords in their search will pop up on the following page; advertisements are good at targeting their market and children can easily wander onto advertisement pages. If it is pay per click, the advertiser is paying Google, for example, anytime a user clicks on the ad from a Google page. It has become evident that children’s behavior is too frequently used to tailor certain types of ads to the young crowd. Regardless of whatever policies the Federal Trade Commission decides to enforce, the Internet will always be a dangerous network for young users to be a part of; the web is huge and children can access almost anything they want through such an interconnected network, and advertisements will continue to expand and tailor to the user’s interest to lure them in.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/06/technology/silicon-valley-objects-to-online-privacy-rule-proposals-for-children.html?pagewanted=all
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