Thought Paper: November 15

Kathryn Montgomery’s Generation Digital (2007) is a walk down memory-lane. It is amazing that the events of less than ten years ago are now footnotes in the history of digital media. How relevant is discussing Bolt.com as a social networking model when now Facebook and MySpace dominate the cyberscape, and even at the time, teens preferred the chat rooms and IM'ing on AOL? Even the competition was not the total demise for Bolt.com, video and music sharing actually killed them (copyright infringement). How relevant is it to consider all children in this discourse, pre-teens (Barbie.com) to nearly 18-somethings (Rock the Vote). As a society, the nearly-adults have always been given more freedom—working, driving, and more freedom to make personal choices—and pre-teens and early teens have always been more protected and afforded less personal freedom. Why would or should their freedom of action be different in the Internet environment? In the offline world of television, marketing companies, advertising companies, and product producers (toys, cereal, or tobacco) have been restricted on what they can promote to children, why should companies be granted unrestricted access just because it is the new digital world. Of course, big business wanted to keep the Internet unregulated, they saw dollars—huge amounts of dollars—from this un-exploited kid market, but society has always restricted their access to kids. Just because the technology is new and different, does not change the concept of society protecting children.

I tend to err on the side of “freedoms” and less regulation, but in hindsight, COPPA seems to have done more good than harm. Now companies seem to be erring on the side of caution for fear of penalties or further government oversight or legislation. One could even argue that other forces, such as the Internet-bubble burst of the late 1990s and music industry lawsuits over kid website’s p2p capabilities, have dampened the enthusiasm to develop and operate kid-oriented sites. Is COPPA the best legislation to protect children—the vulnerable pre-teens and early teens—and still allow the free movement of information and ideas? Probably not, but for now it works. Moreover, with everything dealing with digital media, COPPA will soon be irrelevant, as technology and usage will leave it behind. I disagree with Montgomery, this new digital age is not redefining childhood; it is redefining our concept of regulation. Regulation involving digital media should not be ironclad legislation—once it is enacted, it is nearly impossible to change—but should be time-limited acts that are designed to be debated from time-to-time to enable the regulations to keep pace with technology and usage.

On a personal note, I have found this book to be the most uninteresting, what’s-the-point book we have had to read—history without insight or worse, out-of-date and irrelevant insight. Business—targeting products to kids, mining personal and private family information from children and children's unrestricted access to porn—are bad, regulations to protect children—COPPA—are appropriate, and parents using measures to impede the viewing of “harmful” content—talking with their kids about the Internet, and using NetNanny or CyberPatrol—are good. If parents (of course, I have no children) took a more active roll in monitoring their children’s digital activities and established guideline of appropriate disclosure and participation much of the “harm to children” debate would be moot. Unfortunately, as in the offline world, many parents want society to be responsible for bring up their children.