Dan Sherrier

CNN has an interesting article about children and social networking sites. Basically, it questions what the proper age is to allow children to get on Facebook, MySpace, etc., and it presents several different viewpoints on the matter.

Here’s mine: There’s no reason for children younger than high school to be getting into social networking, regardless of the particular site.

There's a whole wide world off-line.

Before I go further…Parents, I realize you know what’s best for your individual children. I’m simply writing in generalities and providing another perspective.

I know I don’t look old, but I am old enough to remember life without the Internet. I was in the seventh grade when my family got its first household computer, but we didn’t have Internet access until the end of my sophomore year of high school. And that was old-fashioned dial-up, with the funny noise and everything. I was not a habitual Internet user until college, when it became a necessity. Facebook came seven semesters later.

When I moved into my apartment last year, due to some issues with Verizon, I had to do without Internet access in my home for at least a month. It was inconvenient, but it was bearable because I had been there before. For that month, the time I would have spent on the Internet turned into time reading books or taking walks. True, it wasn’t a totally Internet-free month, but my usage was more limited than even in the dial-up days. Certainly, it was less frivolous. Facebook status updates were not a priority.

I have to wonder…If kids are raised on the Internet for as long as they can remember, how would they handle an extended Internet blackout later in life? Would it make them feel isolated and cut off from the world, if that’s the world they know?

I don’t know. But I am grateful I’ve experienced a pre-Internet society, so when technology fails, I know it’s not a sign of the apocalypse.

By no means am I saying that the Internet is evil. Let’s look at Facebook, for example. When I first got on it, late in my senior year of college (when it was only available to college students) it was a toy and little more. Since then, it’s evolved into a useful tool.

I use it to advertise my new business, AllTheCoolKidsDoTheatre.com. (Sorry, that plug just kind of slipped in there.) As my friends from college and high school disperse across the country, I can easily check to see that they’re alive and well. When an old friend has moved into my area, I’ve used Facebook to arrange meeting up in person to catch up.

It’s good for political discourse. You can post your opinions, and interested people can read them, while uninterested people can ignore them. You can spread your opinion without having to bother anyone in person with these unsavory matters.

I can see how high school kids might find practical uses for it. When they go to games and competitions and meet kids from other schools, Facebook’s networking capabilities can help them build and maintain those other-school friendships. Of course, I mean after they’ve met and interacted with these kids in person and if they intend to do so again at next year’s inter-school competition.

And yes, my target market for my business is high school seniors, so I can appreciate it from that perspective as well.

But what use does a middle school kid have for Facebook? They’re too young for the business benefits. They might have a few friends who moved far away, but they can exchange conventional e-mails (or pen-and-paper snail-mail letters, like I did way back in the day…less than two decades ago. Technology’s progressed rapidly, hasn’t it?)

Middle school kids’ lives are already new enough without opening the doors to the social networking world. Their classes now include brand-new people who went to other elementary schools. They have the independence of getting to and from classrooms on their own. Puberty is wreaking all sorts of havoc on their lives, as boys’ voices are betraying them, girls are turning into relative giants waiting for the young lads to catch up, and that other gender suddenly shines in a whole new light.

Shouldn’t boys and girls get used to talking to each other in person before they start hiding behind digital conversations, where they can edit themselves rather than having to speak off the cuff?

Though I’ve tried to block the middle school years from memory, I unfortunately do remember them. They’re rough. If a kid can get through middle school, he or she can handle pretty much anything in life. Those are important years to start learning how to deal with the real world.

And here’s the thing: Facebook and those other sites are NOT the real world.

These sites are convenient tools, but they’re not essential. Let kids explore the real world first, and then they can explore the digital one when they’re well into their teens.

I’m not talking about sheltering kids from the hazards of online predators and such (though everyone should be careful about that, obviously.) I am talking about not sheltering them from live interactions and the world at large.

I can think of no good reason for younger kids to start investing their time into these sites.

It’s not even like playing video games. I played Atari and Nintendo with my sisters and friends right there with me. We played together, learned how to take turns, etc. That’s far different from exchanging electronic messages back and forth with someone in another house.

Granted, I’m not a parent, so I may have missed something–and I’d be happy to hear what that is.

But my recommendation is: There’s no rush to get online. There’s plenty of time later in life to become dependent upon the Internet.

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