Postbureaucrat

Personal blogging by Steph Gray, former digital agency founder and erstwhile bureaucrat

Don’t be down with the kids

I started my career in market research, where soliciting the views of under 16s is frowned upon without rather a lot of faffing around getting hold of parental consent. Online, surveys tend to ask if you’re older than 16, and if not, chuck you out.

On balance, it’s probably a good thing that dubious marketers and market researchers aren’t able to ask intimate questions of youngsters unregulated, but the problem is that similar approaches have tended to be adopted by organisations looking for public comment on policy. Tim Davies, who is basically best described as the all-round guru on strategies for youth engagement through social media, highlighted this problem recently.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I had rather more strongly-held and frankly interesting views on politics and public policy when I was 15 than I do now. To be told to go away isn’t really good enough, if as Tim says, there really isn’t any legal basis for doing so.

So in developing my new platform for online commentable documents, I’m keen to ensure the default moderation policies take a more thoughtful approach to enabling young people to take part, without putting themselves at risk. Thanks to help in the comments of Tim’s post, I’ve come up with this, which I’m hoping to link to from the comments form itself as well as within the standard moderation policy:

If you are aged 16 or under, you may want to talk to your parent/guardian about the ideas on this website and the opinions that you want to express. Please don’t leave any personal details that might identify you (apart from in the email address box, which won’t be published anyway), and you may want to use your first or last name only, rather than your full name.

It’s just a start, and I’d welcome suggestions on how it might be improved.

Photo credit: Morguefile

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10 comments on “Don’t be down with the kids

  1. lesteph says:

    Just blogged: Don’t be down with the kids http://via.leste.ph/dm4CMs

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

  2. timdavies says:

    Great post from @lesteph on avoiding excluding young people from online (and any) engagement http://is.gd/ez6iZ

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

  3. amcunningham says:

    engaging young people with social media from @lesteph (via @timdavies)- could be very relevant to health http://is.gd/ez6iZ #nhssm #hcsm

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

  4. Don’t be down with the kids:

    I started my career in market research, where soliciting the views of under … http://bit.ly/ac3s6J

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

  5. BredaDoherty says:

    Don’t be down with the kids http://bit.ly/bk4nkx

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

  6. Mark Pack says:

    I’ve been puzzled when I’ve seen the odd references to (in effect) under 16s not being welcome on various consultation sites from the public sector. Good to see that you’re trying to tackle this.

    I wonder if there should also be a reminder (for young and old) that comments may stay on the internet and be found by other people for years to come?

  7. Steph says:

    Thanks Mark – that’s a good addition.

  8. carlhaggerty says:

    Don’t be down with the kids http://j.mp/c70CCD < great stuff

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

  9. JonAkwue says:

    Don’t be down with the kids http://j.mp/c70CCD by @lesteph

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

  10. Iandubya says:

    Don’t be down with the kids Helpful Technolgogy blog on why and how to seek the views of under 16s http://bit.ly/bk4nkx

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter