Technolandy

Day 48 (of 2024/25) an age restriction is only part of a way forward… for social medias and more

Oz is looking at 16 being the age to unblock social media’s to youth. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-11-07/labor-backs-social-media-age-minimum-16-years/104571186

I’m not against a limitation – but I do worry that if it comes without some pre-teaching opportunities, it is like looking at age restrictions for drinking… and for driving. One comes with pre-learning and support and practice. The other requires sneaking around, ignoring the laws and trying some more dangerous (as opposed to risk-taking) choices and behaviours. To be clear – there are scaffolded strategies to get a drivers license (though many many experiment as under age participants in a motor vehicle) and nothing to prepare youth for exposure to drugs and alcohol. 

Sigh – I miss Club Penguin. When it first came out (developers were a community away) it was a great way for students to safely practice some netiquette and skills that have emerged into most social media networks – how to interact with strangers; how to be critical thinkers if someone is being truthful; taking a chance with truths – but guided supports so that some continued mis-steps (selfies with extras) do not circulate and remain online for decades afterwards. 

And I worry that by banning personal devices, and adding age restrictions without support and training… we are pushing more netiquette into the darker corners of the web (never been good areas to explore on ones own) and hoping that kids will just ‘figure it out’ when we have many adults not doing good jobs with this themselves… maybe less organization of privilege by age and more based on training and readiness…

Can’t just plan for the bans, but we ought to be doing some thinking, doing, modelling and sharing about entry points for positive use of the most powerful tool to impact our planning if the future of schools.