Launched last week Thursday by Twitter, the latest social network app, Vine, was quickly occupied by porn, which is not surprising to family technology expert, Mary Kay Hoal, President of YourSphere, children’s social network operated out of Davis.
The rapid expression of pornographic material on the new Vine app is a clear indication of how quickly freedom of expression sheds inhibition. And for teens this app can be very misleading.
“It's increasingly important that parents are digitally involved, digitally aware and educated about what their kids and teens are doing online,” Hoal said about Vine. “While video-centric social media tools (such as Skype,and FaceTime for examples) can be beneficial to families or businesses, when used irresponsibly or promoted to consumers to give users the impression that what they share is automatically deleted, this is where we start to see problems with kids and teens.”
According to Hoal, teens believe that apps like Snapchat allowed their texts to be eliminated, but eventually found that recipients of texts take a screen shot with their phone and then have shared images they thought were private. “There's a chance that this will become a reality with Vine,” Hoal said. “The thought may cross through a teen living only in the moment is ‘No one will see this six-second video...so why not?’"
How much damage can be done in six seconds?
Children are gravitating to the social media applications that make it easy to share and comment about videos and photos, and are spending less time on text-oriented sites like Facebook. So there is no doubt Vine will have great appeal.
Hoal cautions that when kids and teens don't have parents talking to them about appropriate use of technology, they are freer to assume that they have a license to utilize the service absent any consequences. Parental silence about these new apps gives the false impression that the content is erased and no one will learn of their behavior.
Parent Resources
- Banana Moments: Help for Parenting in the Network Culture
- Parental authority in the network
- YourSphere social network for children
(Ref: 817-e)
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