Lifestage: Is Facebook SERIOUSLY This Dumb?
“All posts are public and there are no options to restrict viewing. The idea is to connect members of the same school…”
I invite you to read that quote again (taken from this article) about the launch of Facebook’s newest “challenge” to Snapchat called Lifestage.
No options to restrict viewing = no privacy settings.
On a social media app designed specifically for teens (and BY a teen, as the Facebook product manager responsible for its creation is nineteen….yes NINETEEN), where the goal (by Facebook anyway) is to get them to connect with other kids in their school and at other schools, there are NO privacy settings.
What is Facebook thinking here? Let’s take a look at what we know so far:
- We know that their teenage audience is very low, only about 8% in the U.S.
- We know that they’ve known this would happen as far back as 2013 when they tried to acquire Snapchat and were rebuffed yet still bought WhatsApp in a similar attempt to keep up with younger users.
- We know that ever since then, and especially over the last 12–16 months, Facebook has almost completely dedicated itself to copying Snapchat’s features and functions.
- We know that in 2013 a study determined that Facebook was far and away the online site/service that had the most trolling and bullying occurrences and that the primary victims were teens.
- We know that Facebook recognizes this is a problem, because they’ve dedicated an entire portion of their site to the topic and how to handle it.
Contained in this section are several recommendations about handling being bullied by doing what? You guessed it…MANAGING YOUR PRIVACY SETTINGS.
So it definitely seems a little weird for Facebook to be launching THIS particular app at this particular time with THIS particular user experience. The only type of safety or privacy that they’re even attempting here is to limit users over the age of 21 to only being able to view their own profile (which is a really odd way to want to use a social network, although I know a few people who would love to only view themselves all day every day on social media. #NoNames).
HOWEVER, they even addressed THAT as an issue, because of course it is…
The app warns that it cannot guarantee whether all its users are genuine.
So where does this leave us? As always, parents are THE biggest factor with any child’s social media use. But even the most vigilant parent won’t catch everything, and they can’t be at school all the time either. If a kid wants to be on a social media network, they can be very easily and without ever being discovered. This app literally encourages adults and parents to create fake accounts, which is EXTREMELY easy to do by just inserting a fake age and other falsified info. Sure, Facebook will say how that’s against their Terms of Service, but so are a lot of things (i.e. having multiple personal profiles) that are commonplace for many, many users.
I’m usually all for being social and very open on these channels and most apps, but there’s definitely something off-putting about Lifestage to me (and to teens themselves…just check some of the app reviews so far on its 2.5 star rating).
Is it just because I’m an adult, and a parent of a teenager who I know uses social media with her friends? Am I being too overprotective or over-reacting too much? No matter what, to me the best approach is to always try and have the discussions around these things. And I’m not the best at this either but for something like this and social media in general, it needs to be done by parents.
It seems yet again that they (Facebook) are trying to push the boundaries of what we think is appropriate to share online and then walking back when they face public criticism. — Dr. Bernie Hogan, Oxford Internet Institute
What do you think?
