Catching ’Em Young: Gmail For Kids Good Or Bad?

In the age of high-speed Internet, super-smart gadgets and Wi-Fi zones almost in every public place are a boon. You can access information even from the top of a rocky mountain. But, the situation doesn’t look the same when you are a parent of a teenager. The biggest fear you have is, holding the fort on all fronts (such as technology and unlimited access) to keep your child away from the big bad world of Internet.
Where and how do you start making things safer for your children?

Some philosopher said, ‘prepare your children for the road; and not the road for the children’. Yes, it’s a beautiful sentence, but putting it into practice isn’t easy as technology companies are targeting even children now.

The most recent company to join the bandwagon is Google. Soon, the company may allow kids under 13 to open and operate their own account on Gmail. With this, children will be able to navigate through Google pages without having to lie about their age. And understandably enough, the company will soon be facing some uncomfortable questions while wading through controversial waters.

The silver ray of hope, however, is that the company will have to comply by Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) while it is getting the web world ready for teens to come and set up their tents. The COPPA mandates Internet companies to seek parental consent before collecting data related to children. Google, right now, has plans to fully comply by this. The company said it would be implementing a dashboard for parents to oversee their kids’ activities online. And, as a user-welfare measure, Google will also be ensuring that the feature that makes registering of ‘date of birth’ compulsory on computers will be extended to its Android applications too.

Though the company is doing its best to ensure that the privacy of children is protected, the ‘safety’ advocates have not been so conducive towards the news.

Google’s measure of expanding its user base is bound to meet with a fair share of irresponsibility both on the front of parents who may not dedicate time to see where their children are headed on the web, and also on part of the company which may somehow use the data for marketing activities. In both cases, children will be the prime target.

Today, with computer and Internet being the most essential needs of any school going child, discretion of usage becomes a heavy decision with power vested in the hands of children. Even if there is a dashboard that provides parents with all kinds of information regarding their kids’ activity online, it should also alert them if the kid spends time on ‘wrong’ websites. With this, again the ball will return to the parents’ court, who will be left with no option but to reduce kid’s ‘computer time.’

With Google opening doors of the Web for kids, other companies are bound to follow suit. When this happens, the parents have to really think hard and plan their next steps. Instead of resting on the laurels of ‘good parenting’ or racking their brains about fixing their parental methods, it is better to understand the need of the teenager to use this technology for his/her betterment. Counselling and limited access to technology, when integrated both at home and school, can have positive effects on the minds of children.