Today, the US House of Representatives took the Flag of Jackassery, proudly planted it on the front lawn of Castle Dimwit and declared, “We’re for stupidity, kicking puppies, and spitting in people’s soup.” I don’t really like foul language on blogs. I rarely use it on the Forge. But damn it, the US government is just full of motherfuckers. Yeah, that’s right. I used both bold AND italics.
Today, the House of Reps passed a bill, 410-15, requiring schools and public libraries to ban access to social networks from those under 18 and, potentially, pretty much any site that allows freeform communication between users.
As Apophenia wrote, the risk from this kind of legislation is not insignificant. These legislators simply fear what they don’t understand. One doesn’t close down Central Park to minors simply because people have been assaulted there.
This kind of legislation is a real threat to virtual world environments. The mythical droves of sexual predators on MySpace can easily move to World of Warcraft or whatever. Of course, there are no droves. There are isolated, mentally ill and morally deranged individuals, but unfortunately, that’s no different from the rest of life. Life can’t be about accepting no risk. Living includes accepting risk, and while I personally can’t stand MySpace (the main target of the legislation), I see absolutely no reason why kids shouldn’t be able to use it. It’s just a communication method, like a telephone, instant messaging, email, or talking to someone face to face. Different in ease of access, but not different in fundamental principle.
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July 28th, 2006 at 7:15 am
Wizzel Cogcarrier Wizzleton IV
And yet they refuse to ban pornography at public libraries. Morons.
July 28th, 2006 at 7:29 am
Kris L
This is just as bad as those who were trying to sue myspace because their daughter got sexually assaulted by someone she met through there. It’s dimwitted, but what should we expect from people like the Senator who called e-mail the internet and the internet a series of tubes (and yes it was many of these same people who jumped on Gore for crediting himself with coining the phrase ‘digital superhighway’ or whatever phrase it was).
As for the topic of the bill, it is just one more example of how this country somehow believes that minors do not have the same rights as those afforded to everyone else underneath our Constitution. There have been times I’ve known minors with more grasp of what the Constitution means than many adults. You are right, we may as well ban minors from telephone/cellphone calls and all other forms of potential communication with a psycho. No more unsupervised visits anywhere, for example, because we can never be sure our daughter might not meet some handsome man at the mall and suddenly find herself wanting to run off to Mexico with him.
Sorry Wizzel, I am not sure if you are sort of being sarcastic, but I don’t support banning access to pornography in public libraries either. At least not be the government. If the library itself wishes to make a policy of its users not visiting such site, that is okay because they are certainly entitled to make such policies. But to ban it outright for everyone is not the governments purpose.
July 28th, 2006 at 7:42 am
RedBull
This is only banning access to MySpace, etc. from terminals at school. Kids at school should be learning, shouldn’t they?
July 28th, 2006 at 8:02 am
Sisca
First of all a comment: Kids in school (High School and below), do not have the same constitional rights as other citizens. This has been upheld numerous times in various court cases - everything from banning certain clothing types to not allowing kids to leave the campus during the school day.
I think schools should block students from accessing sites like My Space from the school networks. As RedBull said, they’re supposed to be learning. That said, I don’t believe we need a federal law to do this, schools and school districts should be able to handle this on the local level without legislation.
The real problem is the wording of the law. As it stands sites such as CNet could be blocked because they “collect personal information” - your email address is required to login - and “allow communication between users” - the forums definatly count but heck even the user comments on reviews could be considered places where users can interact. And what about wikipedia, technically it allows users to interact and with their recent changes you’d need to login to edit and they require personal information for that login. It’s just to vague.
I think we have a lot more sick people out there preying on children than we did when I grew up and was able to roam the streets of a fairly good sized city alone at the age of 7. We’ve also got a lot more people so it’s not that surprising. Even if only 2% of the population were predators, and that number stayed constant, we’d have more predators now.
The real issue is we’re trying to absolve parents of any responsibility in raising their kids. I’m sorry, I know it sounds cruel to the kid but, if you don’t care enough about your kids to monitor what they’re doing on these sites and to explain to them the inherient dangers (didn’t we all get told never to get in the car with a stranger?) then they, and you, deserve what they get.
July 28th, 2006 at 10:01 am
Matt
As others have pointed out, it’s not just schools. It’s also public libraries, where some of society’s poorest people go to gain internet access. And it’s not just MySpace, though that was the ostensible target of the bill: It’s anything from our games to Wikipedia to political blogs like the Daily Kos (a better education on politics for kids than any school is ever going to give them).
This is a typical overreaction from the low-IQ folk in Congress.
July 28th, 2006 at 12:03 pm
Fabian
Don’t these people have researchers and consultants on staff, so they can actually find out about the subject they’re voting on before doing so? I think this Bill is simply a product of ignorance of what these sites actually do and are.
At least, I would hope so. It would worry me even more if the U.S. Congress actually understood what they were doing and did it anyway.
July 29th, 2006 at 12:03 am
Psychochild
Unfortunately, it seems that some of the comments here demonstrate why this even had a chance of passing. If you don’t understand how being on a social networking site is learning, you are part of the problem.
Look, I’m about the last person to be a cheerleader for this “Web 2.0″ garbage, but it is blindingly obvious that online collaboration is an important part of the future for these kids. It’s the same thing as saying that sending IMs is a waste of time, because they have become an important part of how young people communicate these days.
This is the same attitude that had adults clucking their tongues at me as I “wasted time” typing in programs “on that expensive toy” Apple II computer back in the day. It was this activity that got me interested in programming and took me on the first steps to the career I have today.
There’s more to learning than kids sitting in a classroom being taught how to pass the upcoming standardized tests so that the school district can keep their funding. It seems we’ve forgotten the importance of letting kids learn how to socialize in school.
July 29th, 2006 at 1:25 am
Joseph Monk
You think that’s bad? You should see how schools are here in Korea. These kids do public school hours like most of us did, but afterwords they go to private academies ALL NIGHT. When I used to teach English, back when I was a volunteer in Lusternia, I once surveyed my students about when they get home. Average was between 10pm and 11pm, 6 days a week(they go to public school on Saturdays). When asked what they were doing for summer vacation, more private schools to fill the hours that they would have been in public schools.
The way the classes are structured, there’s basically no social interaction. Books, Books, Books.
Anyway, for the topic on hand, I’m with Psycochild on this one. I got basically the same thing through my school days, wasting my time playing with computers. Then when I took an internship(learned more in 2 weeks than I had in 2 years of college) I was being used and wasting my time…
Some people have forgotten how we learn best, when we’re having fun. Especially children, if they enjoy it, it’s not “studying” to them.
August 20th, 2006 at 2:22 am
Brask
Well said, Pschochild.
The primary purpose of school isn’t to learn facts and figures. It is to learn how to survive and interact with other humans. Those skills are what you need for the rest of your life. Online collaboration is an important part of those skills.
The real crime with this legislation is that it doesn’t affect the use of computers at home. This strengthens the digital divide - the students who own home computers are unaffected, while those without are now expelled from the most popular method of communicating with their peers. The ostensible purpose of putting computers in the class room was to close this divide.