Raising Humans in a Digital World

by Diana Graber

  Google carefully analyzes your previous searches, plus a host of other data, to determine what it thinks you are looking for or what you might like, and voila! That’s what you get. You may never even know what Google decides to filter out for you. To illustrate this point, here’s an exercise I have my students try at home: Pick any word or phrase, though somewhat controversial topics works best (e.g., Iran, climate change, presidential). Next, ask five different family members or friends to Google the word or phrase on their own devices—mobile or desktop—and then to compare results. Likely, you will find each person’s results to be unique. They will be tailored and customized to the person who conducted the search (notice that the ads will be customized as well).

  Why does this matter pertain to today’s youth? Because young people are supposed to be hard at work figuring out who they are, what they like, and what they believe in. This task is arguably more successfully accomplished when they are exposed to a broad spectrum of ideas and information. If Google, Facebook, Instagram, or other sites feed them a customized stream of information based on previous searches and personal information, to borrow the words of one of my students, “that’s just creepy.”

  Pariser puts it in more thoughtful terms: “We need to make sure that they [internet services] also show us things that are uncomfortable or challenging or important. . . . We really need the internet to be that thing that we all dreamed of it being. We need it to connect us all together. We need it to introduce us to new ideas and new people and different perspectives. And it’s not going to do that if it leaves us all isolated in a web of one.”21

  Avoiding Filter Bubbles

  While Google and Facebook have drawn the most ire for data mining users’ information in exchange for customized experiences, this phenomenon happens all over the web. Netflix and YouTube queue up movies and videos they think we’ll like, based on our previous viewings. So if you just watched Wedding Crashers, it’s more likely Netflix will offer you The 40-Year-Old Virgin, rather than The Civil War. Amazon has customized its offerings for years, starting with books. Today, the world’s largest online retailer suggests all kinds of products based on whatever we bought or searched for last.

  Granted, most young people aren’t using Facebook or shopping on Amazon (too much) yet, but they are watching Netflix and YouTube. They’re also using Instagram, which Facebook owns. A 2017 survey found that 76 percent of American teens, ages thirteen to seventeen, use this social network.22 Instagram employs many of the same successful customization techniques as Facebook. In 2016, Instagram announced, “To improve your experience, your feed will soon be ordered to show the moments we believe you will care about the most. The order of photos and videos in your feed will be based on the likelihood you’ll be interested in the content, your relationship with the person posting, and the timeliness of the post.”23

  Unless you happened to be one of my students and were required to read this, you probably missed this announcement entirely. In short, Instagram decided to follow parent Facebook’s lead of reordering posts based on factors such as how recently the post was shared, interactions with the person who shared it, and whether or not the user found the post interesting. Based on this data, Instagram decides what it thinks a young user should see.

  Judging from the grumbling I’ve heard among teens, they aren’t crazy about algorithms making decisions for them, just like they don’t relish Mom deciding what they should wear to school. But I’m hearing mostly from kids who are learning what to look out for. For each of these students, millions more have not learned why or how personal information is collected and how algorithms work. If they don’t know or understand the process, they certainly aren’t going to give a flying hoot about it.

  Microsoft’s Bill Gates is one of a growing number of technologists who have expressed concerns about filter bubbles. He told a Quartz reporter that there is a solution: “Education is a counterbalance to filter bubbles . . . since it exposes people ‘to a common base of knowledge.’”24

  For now, the opportunity the internet provides for everyone to be heard might outweigh the negative impact of filter bubbles, but it’s critical for kids to understand how they work and, more importantly, how to avoid falling prey to their influence. It might sound hyperbolic to claim that our very democracy is at stake, but consider the long-term consequences of ignoring this problem. What if kids end up consuming only a narrow, and predetermined, slice of the vast array of ideas, information, and worldviews the internet has to offer? That doesn’t sound like a wise use of this powerful and amazing resource to me.

  The Paradoxical Privacy Practices of Teens

  Andie is a fourteen-year-old girl I met one brisk February morning while visiting a K–12 school in Los Angeles. I was there to deliver lessons to their elementary- and middle-school students, but in the afternoon, I spent some time with their ninth graders. I planned to talk to them about online privacy, but these students weren’t at all interested in what not to post online. They’d “already heard that lecture,” they told me. What they really wanted to talk about was what they should be sharing online. They peppered me with questions:

  •Do I need to have a LinkedIn account to get a job?

  •I play club soccer, and I’d like college recruiters to see me play. Should I make a video? How long should it be? Where should I post it?

  •In my spare time I tutor young kids. Would it be an invasion of their privacy to post their photos online?

  •I’m performing in a lot of plays. Do you think I should videotape them for YouTube? Should I make my own channel?

  I was impressed with their questions and at how eager they were to talk. The hour we had together wasn’t nearly enough.

  When class ended, Andie lingered and introduced herself to me. A petite girl with a cascading mane of jet black hair, she was one of the only students who hadn’t uttered a word during the entire class. But once we started chatting, it didn’t take long for her bubbly personality to reveal itself. She even asked if she could show me her Instagram feed. When I said yes, she proudly revealed an account with 3,800 followers. Then she told me her story:

  About a year ago my mom’s friend started a clothing line. She was just making T-shirts, swimsuits, and stuff for teens. Since her company was brand new, she couldn’t afford a model, so she asked my mom if I’d model for her. My mom asked me, and I agreed, and then I started putting some of the photos on my Instagram feed, and before long a bunch of kids from school found out about it and wanted to follow me.

  Andie told me how much this boosted her self-esteem. Soon some of her new online friends became offline friends, and she said this is “helping me become less shy at school.”

  “I think it’s good that you talk to kids about posting positive stuff online,” Andie said. “Usually adults just tell us social media is bad. Kids hear that and just keep posting the bad stuff anyway, but on private or fake accounts. Adults forget that not using social media, for us, is not an option.”

  As I was driving home, I thought about what Andie said. What a delicate balancing act kids have to perform today between satisfying their need (and desire) to present themselves online while also preserving some privacy. It takes a lot of wisdom to get the balance just right.

  To Share or Not to Share?

  In 2015, a comprehensive study on the relationship between youth and online privacy revealed that teens “care more about social privacy than they do about privacy in the context of third-parties and big data/information privacy.”25 Researchers figured this is due to the fact that teens “fail to grasp what happens with that data after it has been posted.” And I figure this is due to lack of education. Paradoxically, according to this report, even though teens care deeply about their social privacy, they still share a lot of personal information online. Teens share real names (92 percent), photos of themselves (91 percent), interests (84 percent), birth date (82 percent), and school name and city/town where they live (71 percent) through social me
dia platforms. At the same time, they go to great lengths to keep this information private from certain audiences by using a combination of nontechnical measures (creating fake identities and accounts) as well as technical ones (using privacy settings). Teens also employ other creative methods to maintain privacy online, particularly to avoid parental surveillance, like moving to new sites or encoding hidden meaning into their posts by using cultural references, slang, and emojis.

  Teen privacy practices are a study in contradictions. On one hand it looks like they’re indiscriminately sharing waaaay too much information, while on the other hand they seem to be going to great lengths to limit what gets seen, using methods that completely perplex adult onlookers. But as with every new digital activity, one’s perspective depends on which generation you’re viewing it from.

  A perfect example of this perspective problem is the “selfie.” In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past ten years, a selfie is a self-portrait one takes with a phone. While adults commonly worry that the numerous selfies kids take and post reveal TMI (too much information), both literally and figuratively, kids don’t see them that way at all. For most cell phone-wielding kids, selfies are a normal part of their lives. And why shouldn’t they be? Self-image sharing is nothing new. It used to be considered high art. Rembrandt did it, as did Claude Monet, and Vincent van Gogh, too (he painted more than thirty self-portraits between 1886–1889). Mexican painter Frida Kahlo created fifty-five self-portraits in her lifetime, often documenting the personal tragedies she endured. When asked why she painted so many pictures of herself, she answered, “Because I am the subject I know best.”26

  Technology has merely simplified the age-old act of self-disclosure. “It used to be that portraits were only available to people that were wealthy enough to hire Leonardo da Vinci to paint their picture or to hire a portrait photographer,” says Dr. Pamela Rutledge. “But with the cell phone and the ability to upload to Facebook or Instagram at no cost, it has totally democratized portraiture.”27

  I’d wager that if someone like van Gogh were alive today, he’d be snapping selfies, particularly if reincarnated as a teenager smack in the middle of the task of figuring out who he is and how to present that self to the world. What better way to document this process than by taking and sharing self-images?

  “With selfie-taking, it puts people in charge of their own self-image,” says Rutledge. “I think selfies play a big role in letting people document their growth and their progress. And explore identities. And think about themselves. So, I think that part of it is very positive.”28

  Nevertheless, most parents worry, and rightfully so, that self-images posted online might reveal too much personal information that could damage their children’s digital reputations or put them in harm’s way, while kids don’t worry about this at all. And that is my point.

  When viewed through the rose-colored lens of youth, digital activities seem full of possibility and promise. Seldom do they look as rosy to parents. This applies to all the topics we’ve covered thus far—reputation, screen time, relationships, and privacy. Each of these—the four cornerstones of a sturdy structure that will keep your children safely protected in their digital world—are complex and sometimes confusing. Kids need conversation and education surrounding each one.

  They need us to look at the digital world through their lens once in a while, too!

  CYBER CIVICS MOMENTS

  Virtual Stranger Danger

  Children everywhere are taught about real world “stranger danger,” but what about virtual stranger danger? They will come into contact with many, many more strangers online than they ever will in real life. Even though students I’ve met represent a small sampling of the world at large, you would not believe how many have told me they have been asked for personal information from a stranger online. Even more disconcerting is how many say they know kids who have willingly provided such information to strangers.

  The moment you hand your children a connected device, it is vital to share these hard, fast rules regarding personal information. Tape these to your refrigerator, your laptop, desktop computer, or your kids’ foreheads. Whatever it takes.

  1.Tell your children they should never, ever share the following information (their own or another’s) with a stranger online without your express consent:

  •Full name

  •Physical address

  •Email address

  •Phone number

  •School name

  •Current location

  •Clues to future locations

  •Password

  •Photos

  As your children get older, they will start using their own best judgment about if and when it is safe to share any of the above. Until then, make sure they understand and agree to your rules.

  2.Tell your children they should never, ever engage with strangers online. Explain that, on the internet, it’s Halloween every day. People are hiding their identities behind masks otherwise known as their screens. While most of these people are nice, some may not be. As your children get older, they will start using their own best judgment as to if and when to engage with online strangers, but until then make sure they follow your rules.

  3.Tell your children they should never, ever meet someone in real life that they have first met online. It may take longer for your children to develop the good judgment they’ll need to decide when it is okay to bend this rule, so keep open communication about their friendships, online and offline.

  Password Perfect

  Passwords are our first line of defense to protect our personal information online. Even though there are a lot of online programs that will make and remember passwords for them, teaching children how to make and remember their own is important. It underscores how critical it is to have safe and strong passwords and can also be a lot of fun.

  1.Teach your children these seven rules for making a great password. A great password should:

  •Be at least eight characters in length.

  •Include a combination of lower and uppercase letters, symbols, and numbers.

  •Never include personal information (like a birth date or Social Security number).

  •Never include the name of family members, friends, or pets.

  •Never include sequences, such as abcde or 12345.

  •Never include a dictionary word (unless a letter has been changed into a symbol).

  •Be changed regularly—at least every six months.

  2.Explain the term “mnemonic” to your children. Simply put, a mnemonic is a memory device that aids in the retention of information.

  3.Ask your children to think of their favorite celebrity, athlete, musician, or historical figure (make sure they do not tell you who it is). This will be their mnemonic.

  4.Teach your children how to use a mnemonic to make a great password. Here’s an example: Tell them your mnemonic is Taylor Swift (work with me here) and that your favorite song of hers is “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together.” Use the first letter of each word of this song title to begin your password (WANEGBT). Next, convert this into a mix of upper and lowercase letters (WaNeGbT). Because you need to add a number or symbol, change the last word, “together,” to “2gether” (WaNeGb2). Finally, since you need to add one more character to make your password the right length and Swift seemed emphatic about never ever getting back together, add an exclamation point at the end. Here is your password: WaNeGb2!

  5.Have your children follow your example, creating their own great password. When they finish, try to guess who their mnemonics are based on the passwords they’ve made. Make another password yourself, and have them try to guess yours, or their siblings’ or friends’ mnemonics. I have done this in the classroom numerous times and am always amazed at how good kids are at this game. Plus, they will never ever forget how to make and remember great passwords!

  Pitch Me!

  Credit for this activity goes to one of my students, who told me that if sh
e wants to download an app, her dad makes her first research it thoroughly. Then she has to make a PowerPoint presentation and use it to pitch him on the app. “Brilliant!” I thought. I loved this idea so much, I’ve made it easy for you to do it at home.

  1.So, your children (who are at least thirteen years of age) want to download Snapchat. Invite them to research the app first. This is easy to do; Snapchat’s privacy policy and terms of service are accessible via a Google search.

  2.Have your children create a presentation for you about the app. They don’t have to use Microsoft PowerPoint for this task. This is a wonderful opportunity for them to practice using one of the many free presentation tools available online. One of my favorites is Prezi. Tell your children to use the following questions as a guide when they create their presentation:

  •What is the minimum user age for the app?

  •What personal information will the app ask for?

  •What will you receive in exchange for the personal information you provide?

  •Will you share user content on this app? If so, who will own that content?

  •Will the app share your information with third parties? If so, how?

  •Will it track your location?

  •What conduct does the app expect from users? Is there a way to report bad behavior?

  •Will there be ads on the app? How else might the app be monetized?

  •What kind of privacy settings does the app offer?

  If this seems like too much work for your teens, please consider the amount of work they’ll be putting into that app in the coming years. It takes time and effort to snap, curate, and post photos. Tagging, commenting, liking, and reading what others post takes time, too. If your teens don’t have time to research this app, then they surely don’t have time to use it!