Sometimes it feels like somebody’s watching me

This summer a news story circulated about the fact that many young children now have some sort of online presence, as parents post photos of their kids on blogs and in Facebook profiles. As a dad blogger, I have mixed feelings about that. I’ve enjoyed sharing my life as a full-time dad with an online audience, and I’ve occasionally posted pictures of my own kids along the way.

In general, though, I think we need to be careful about how much personal information we put online. Facebook is the perfect example of how easy it is for an organization to take advantage of our willingness to fill in registration forms, and then change our settings behind our backs. As trusting as I have been of major online social networking sites, people half my age seem to lack even a tenth of my discretion. We’ve already raised a generation of high school and college kids that have almost a complete disregard for personal privacy. And we’ve seen in recent news how videos and photos of kids and young adults in private settings and abusive situations can quickly end up online and go viral. The results can be and have been tragic.

As much as we need to increase our concern about our own privacy, my greater fear is for the next generation. When we pay more attention to our computers, cell phones and other gadgets than we do to our own kids, and we spend most of that time sharing the minute (and minute-by-minute) details of our lives, what message does it send them about the importance of personal connection and privacy?

So, in the midst of all this, the introduction of a new toy by Mattel has me pretty creeped out — “Barbie Video Girl” — a new Barbie doll with a video camera built into its necklace. The toy was recently released in Australia and, thankfully, has already begun to receive a backlash from consumers. A clinical psychologist there called for Australians to boycott the product, calling it a potentially pornographic tool. My parental mind refuses to make the mental leap to possible pornographic uses. But it doesn’t take much of a jump to see how easily kids (e.g., “big brother”) could use these toys to embarrass and bully their siblings, and how easily that could get out of hand once those videos get onto a computer.

A consumer spokesperson downplayed the technology, referring to other devices that are equipped with cameras and suggested that we’ll be seeing a lot more camera-equipped toys in the future. He suggests that it’s not fair to say that you can’t put cameras and that you can’t stifle innovation. But that’s not entirely true. As consumers, we do have choices in the things we buy our kids. When technologies migrate from cell phones and surveillance equipment into toys for young children, isn’t that the perfect opportunity to stifle innovation? When toy companies and their spokespeople are so out of touch with the values and concerns of parents and consistently ignore the well being of our kids in the name of profits, we need to hold them (and the stores that stock their toys) accountable by speaking out and by voting with our wallets (or, I guess, without them).

When other parents mindlessly buy these toys for their kids, and our own kids start to ask for them, too, that may just be the perfect time to begin the conversation with our kids about privacy in an ever changing world of social media. And as we start thinking about what we’ll say, maybe we’ll form some privacy policies to apply to our own online experience.