EDU 790 COPPA/CIPA
CIPA/COPPA
Protecting Children Online
Opening Thoughts:
Protecting children online is a topic that is very relevant and personal to me. Being a father of a 6 year old girl I take this topic very serious. My daughter has access to a tablet and enjoys watching videos or playing games online. I constantly monitor what she is doing and often find myself having to block videos and games that pop up on her device. As a parent it makes me feel better knowing that there are laws out there such as CIPA and COPPA to protect children.
Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule (COPPA):
The primary purpose of COPPA is to place parents in control over what information is collected online from their young children. This law was enacted to protect children under the age of 13.
Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA):
The Federal Communications Commission enacted CIPA to address concerns about children's access to obscene or harmful content over the internet. According to the FCC's website, under CIPA schools and libraries subject to CIPA may not receive the discounts offered by the E-rate program unless they certify that they have an Internet safety policy that includes technology protection measures. The protection measures must block or filter Internet access to pictures that are: (a) obscene; (b) child pornography; or (c) harmful to minors (for computers that are accessed by minors).
Closing Thoughts:
While I find it great that there are rules and laws out there to protect children's information and children from predatory behavior online, I do not think this is enough. First, I think the age of 13 is to young. Children up to the age of 18, which is the age a child legally become adults, should be protected under the laws. Even at the age of 18 years old people are not fully mature and may not fully understand or know the consequences of their behavior online, whether this behavior is a stupid decision making a poor choice or being duped into a predatory situation. While the internet is regulated and monitored by policing agencies these agencies are spread out and may consist of a wide range of agencies such as local municipality to federal level policing. There should be an agency created with one purpose and one purpose only and that is to police the internet to keep people, specifically children safe. While some may argue that there are agencies that do this already those agencies are not centralized and are usually part of a larger agency. For instance the FBI has their own policing strategies as do some local police forces. It would be nice to have a federal level agency specifically created for monitoring the internet. This would be the only single purpose with 100% of federally allocated resources dedicated to keeping people safe online.
Speaking to Dahna Boyd's comment that COPPA teaches kids to lie, if parents allow their children permission to give a fake age to join a media platform that is on the parents. As far as teaching them to lie its a stretch and knowing that Dahna Boyd works for Microsoft, it makes sense that she would oppose COPPA and would want to minimize or dismiss COPPA as her employer would benefit a great deal if they were to be able to collect and sell data of minors. Personal information and data on individuals is as good as gold as this data and information is often used in marketing and advertising to sell products or services. Profit over protections.
Fascinating observation about danah boyd working for Microsoft. While I don't think she had negative intentions when she wrote her views on COPPA it really is a factor I hadn't considered and something that needs to be thought about. Thanks for mentioning that.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the reply!
DeleteHi Joe,
ReplyDeleteI fully agree with you that we need to protect our children until they are of legal age. I too monitor my children's online activity, but now that I have a 14 year old it is more difficult. I am lucky that she shares with me and asks before she downloads things. I check her phone often and use parental controls, however I am sure she can figure out ways around that. I like your idea of having specific agencies that monitor the Internet. I watch a lot of ID channel, and it is a very scary world out there for kids, especially virtually.
Thank you for the reply!
ReplyDeleteHi Joe,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your post- like Genevie, I also agree that these laws need to be adjusted to protect children until they reach legal age (17 or 18 years old). While I am not yet a parent, I feel that my 3rd grade students are exposed to things on the internet that are definitely not age-appropriate. Sometimes, it's harmless, like quoting different TikTok audios because they think they're funny, but we have had issues where students engage in behavior that is wildly inappropriate. The few times I've had to talk to students about things that they're saying or things that they're doing that are not appropriate, most times the child has no idea of the true meaning of the words they're saying or the actions they're doing.
It's definitely scary to me that my students still have access to inappropriate content on different social media sites (particularly TikTok and Youtube) because they/their parents signed up for accounts and weren't being truthful with the age requirement. Prior to it being shut down, Snapchat used to have a feature for kids under the age requirement called Snapkidz-- it still gave kids access to the app but it was more protected. I feel like this should be something that is required for all social media platforms!
Thank you for the reply!
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