Abstract
Dear Alice,
Having grown up in the olden days when there were no smart phones and no social media and the internet was referred to as the “information superhighway”, there is little public evidence of my misspent youth. This, frankly, is the only good thing about being 40. Any incriminating photos (taken by an actual camera, developed at the chemist’s and then carefully sorted in case your mum went through them) are languishing in shoe boxes in my friends’ attics. Unless I suddenly become famous, of course.
There are diaries, letters and scrapbooks that it would pain me to read locked in a room on my own. The thought of anyone else seeing them is too awful to contemplate but – embarrassment aside – could there be consequences for my career if these were to see the light of day? (Some of those perms were really bad.)
Enshrining the “right to be forgotten” in law would have drastic consequences for freedom of expression. Such a right would be open to abuse by politicians and others who wish to manipulate the past for their own gain. It’s fair enough that adults should have to live with the consequences of their own actions.
Now that I have two kids I wonder should we apply the same rules to young people who aren’t old enough to know better? Maybe legislation, like the new Californian law that will allow young people under 18 the right to scrub embarrassing content or information that they have posted, could protect children from having to live with the embarrassment, not to mention the more serious consequences, of their youthful mistakes for the rest of their lives.
Credit: Mark Boardman/www.markboardman.com
Best wishes,
Pam
Dear Pam,
I understand why, as a parent, you may have concerns about the implications for your children of what they post on social media sites. However, having grown up in the first generation to use such websites I feel there is an over-emphasised, and sometimes sensationalised, view in the media that young people are going to come to harm.
I completely understand that there will always be people who will manipulate the system and attempt to use it in harmful manner. But just as your and my generation were taught not to get into cars with strangers, so young people today are taught not to interact with strangers online.
There is no need for a “right to be forgotten”. I am 23 years old. I started using social media when I was 11 or 12. It has been a part of my life since then. I grew up understanding that there would be consequences from what I posted online. Admittedly, there was no way imaginable that I could have conceived how much of a giant social media is today. But even my 12-year-old self, obsessed with MySpace, Bebo and MSN Messenger, knew not to post something online that could be harmful to me, or others.
If I knew 10 years ago how to use social media, surely children today have an even better understanding of what to post online than I ever did.
All the best,
Alice
Dear Alice,
As anyone who has witnessed a two-year-old work their way around an iPhone knows, children today have a symbiotic relationship with technology. Photographs are no longer taken on special occasions but on a daily basis by a phone not a camera – sometimes wielded by a five-year-old who already knows how to text the images to Granny. Teaching children about the impact of sharing their images and thoughts should start in primary school – and, given the propensity of doting parents to share news of their offspring’s every bowel movement, perhaps training should be included in antenatal classes as well.
And will children really care about protecting their futures? I was a vehement anti-smoker at 10 but saving my dinner money to buy packets of 10 Regal King Size at 14, because, despite all the health warnings from school and my parents, my teenage self could not conceive that my actions might have an impact on my future. And if I didn’t care about my health, why would I care about something as unimportant as my career?
Credit: Mark Boardman/www.markboardman.com
All the best,
Pam
Dear Pam,
I agree that the use of social media should be taught to young children. I learnt how to use social media from my peers, and as I got older my school and university both encouraged me to use social media and warned me of the dangers of it.
However, these days, for every job interview I go to, I’m expected to make sure my Facebook page is private and that my Twitter account only says positive things. Can I ask you whether before you went for your first job interview you went through your personal diary and ripped out pages containing something you wouldn’t wish your would-be employer to read? I hope it doesn’t sound too harsh to say that I didn’t think so.
For the majority of people today social media is their diary. How is it fair that young people have to self-censor their diaries before attending a job interview or fear that clients might read what they get up to? At least social media shows that we have a life – though it’s most likely to be pretty mundane and just like everyone else’s.
Surely enough background checks are made on people already? Criminal records and references from past employers are the norm for any job position. Do these checks alone not offer enough of an insight into a would-be employee? Then there are the face-to-face interviews. Speaking to someone in an interview must offer much more of an insight into their personality than trawling through page after page of a Facebook feed.
All the same, I have heard on numerous occasions that employers are more likely to employ someone with an open Facebook page than one that is private. A private Facebook page suggests the user has something to hide.
Best wishes,
Alice
Dear Alice,
The Crown Prosecution Service says that youth should be taken into account when deciding whether to prosecute over offensive social media posts. I think employers should also apply a similar approach. But until those recruiting have grown up with social media themselves, will they be so understanding? A boozy snapshot is one thing but what about comments that are deemed to be unacceptable? Earlier this year, Paris Brown, the 17-year-old youth crime commissioner for Kent, was forced to resign because of racist, homophobic and offensive tweets she had posted between the ages of 14 and 16. Most young people won’t have the Mail on Sunday scouring their Twitter feed – but who knows when their past will be looked into, and what the consequences of that will be?
All the best,
Pam
Dear Pam,
I think employers should understand how much social media matters to people today and take that into account when making decisions about hiring.
You mentioned earlier the California law that from 2015 will allow minors to request that social media and websites eliminate content. I will not be the only person who wonders whether, if there is an option to have all content removed, young people will actually be more inclined to post content they may later regret. A law like this is an invitation to young people to act inappropriately.
And there is always the delete button. I can’t quite get my head around the fact that a new law needs to be brought in when there is a simple button that does the same thing. Yes, the picture, post, link or comment that you have just deleted is still out there somewhere in cyberspace; yes, that picture, post, link or comment is now the property of the social media site you shared it with (you’d know this if you read the small print, but no one does). But the likelihood of anyone retrieving one tiny, insignificant picture from the billions out there is minuscule. Why introduce a law that will only encourage young people to upload inappropriate content knowing full well that they can request to have it taken down again when it suits them, when they are applying for university or a job?
The whole point of history, to me, is to learn from it and how can it be learnt from if it is has been erased? What if people started deleting parts of their personal history, is that right? Foreign Secretary William Hague gave a big political speech when he was 16. People do important things before they are 18. They shouldn’t edit them out of history.
Best wishes,
Alice