(Newswire.net — December 16, 2015) — Kids’ use of social media networks is fast becoming one of the biggest worries of today’s parents.
Clearly, it is impossible to have total control over children’s engagement on social networks because there are so many ways of accessing them – even when parents take away their children’s phones, computers and tablets, kids have friends who will gladly lend them theirs.
It would be unfair to say that parents have nothing to worry about – in today’s world a rising number of crimes are comitted on social networks, anything from child pornography solicitation, to abductions and traficking.
But there is some potentially good news for parents: a new EU law, which is still in the draft phase, proposes to restrict the children under the age of 16 from joining online social networks, or at least without an explicit permition from a legal guardian.
This is actually just an amendment to the already existing law that prescribes the age limit of 13. Nevertheless, the draft caused somewhat of a public outcry in Europe resulting in petitions for this law to be stopped.
Some say the age difference between 13 and 16 is not too dramatic to cause a public outcry, and that most parents would welcome the new law.
However, campaigners claim that this new law might make children more vulnerable by preventing access to valuable information, and that it may even make them lie about their age just to be able to access social networks.
Janice Richardson, former coordinator of Europen Safer Internet Network, and consultant to the United Nations’ information technology body, the ITU and the Council of Europe said: “Moving the age from 13 to 16 represents a major shift in policy on which it seems there has been no public consultation. We feel that moving the requirement for parental consent from age 13 to age 16 would deprive young people of educational and social opportunities in a number of ways, yet would provide no more (and likely even less) protection”.
The Diana Award Youth Board, whose aim is to prevent and to protect from bullying said: “This higher age threshold may incentivise children between 13 and 15 to lie about their age. Children aged 13 and above have long accessed online services. An artificial and sudden change to this threshold will likely result in many children between the ages of 13 and 15 lying about their ages in order to continue accessing online services rather than asking their parents to consent. This development would make it more difficult for online services to offer children age-approppriate guidance and tools to ensure a safe and privacy-protective experience online”.
The member states discussed the draft on Tuesday. If they agre on it, they will vote on Thursday before the law ratification in the parliament. If the law is ratified, there will be two years implementation period for each country.
If this law comes into effect, it will be a nuisance for social media services. The fines for non-compliance would go up to tens of millions pounds for the biggest media services.