Access allowed: Under 13’s and the social web.

Hello Skowt Readers

I am Chris Meadows ACC Explorers in Avon County. I write a Scouting blog called Jabbering All Day Long. The Skowt team asked recently if I would be intrested in doing some guest writing for the Skowt Blog so here I am.

The quoted section below is taken from my Jabbering all Day Long and was written in August however,

I was reading the latest copy of Scouting Magazine and I came across a very interesting letter.

The letter was commenting that in Scouting Magazine April/May issue it said “There is a growing tendency to promote the use of Social Networking sites among our Members” and that both Facebook and Twitter restrict the use of their service to people over the age of 13. The letter went on the comment that should we [Scouting] be promoting scouts to partake in something which “the providers themselves consider unsuitable for a large part of our membership” and that the letter also indicated that by posting information in this way we are encouraging young people to break the rules.

While I agree with the response that Scouting Magazine gave to the letter it did get me thinking, I am involved predominantly in the Explorer Scout section and therefore all the young people I work with, when asked by Facebook or Twitter are you 13 or over can click Yes with guilt free.

However I know a quite a few Scout group Facebook pages where groups provide mainly photos sharing from activities which the group took part in. Obviously little Jonny and Little Jane are not tagged or named in any way however should they want to be part of this group they either need to get their parents to sign up to Facebook or “Break the Rules”.

I would guess that most scout groups would say that the Facebook page was there to provide information for the Parents not for the young people to be part of, however isn’t inclusion what Scouting is all about.

So the questions still remains “A Scout is to be trusted” and should we ask a scout to break that trust to be included in something the Scout Group is doing? I would be very intrested to know your thoughts

Since writing the above post, I have been given a guided tour around Skowt and maybe now there is a viable option for little Jonny/Jenny Scout  who can now click ‘sign me up’ without fear of  not being a good Scout.

It is worth noting that 82% of Young People in Scouting are under the age of 13. Providing appropriate and safe ways for them to share their Scouting lives online is a very real and current issue.

TTFN

K

chris<DOT>meadows<AT>avonscouts<DOT>org<DOT>uk

www.jabbering.co.uk