The real ‘Digital Natives’ are all Illegal Immigrants

Wikipedia defines Digital Native‘s as > “A digital native is a person who was born during or after the general introduction of digital technology, and through interacting with digital technology from an early age, has a greater understanding of its concepts.”

I would like to make a case for a complete overhaul of the prevalent Legal Age requirements associated with registering for digital ID‘s. Google & Facebook as major providers of Auth services should take a fresh look at minors on their networks. It is a well known fact that millions of minors aged between 6-13 years now have Google ID’s and FB accounts. i see my kids, their friends online on these networks.

Heck, I have more kids coming and talking to me in the real world [about my work] than I have peers asking me the same. I make games, and in the past have been the Founder/Co-founder of 2 Online portals [Zapak.com & BigAdda.com - an Online Casual Gaming portal & a Social Network respectively]. Both have many minors as members – Zapak probably has a significant majority of kids as users.

While Legal Age for acceptance of “Terms of Service” contracts require users to be at least – 18 yrs old in India and 13 years – rest of the world, this is impossible to enforce since there is no way to authenticate the Date fo Birth given by end users. A large number of kids have ‘discovered’ the convenient ‘quick ageing’ solution of adding an extra 10 years to their Year of birth. This fudging is widely prevalent and an acceptable subterfuge.

Kids simply cant accept that – some egghead lawyer somewhere has decreed that they cant be online. I remember a number of heated debates about this when we worked on our ToS and Sign up forms for Zapak as well as BigAdda.

However to move the point from an academic debate to the practical real world impact, I would like to give the following example.

Yesterday, I felt really really sad. Perhaps the first time ever, that I was filled with a sense of deep remorse. I felt sick, and depressed and for a moment even considered surrendering myself at the nearest Police Station.

I was inadvertently responsible for my son’s Google ID getting disabled. Ishaan is 8 years old and has been a digital native since the day I signed him up for his Google ID (the day he was born). The ID itself is probably not that important, but the nature of use that he puts it to – now – is a lot more critical.

Ishaan started school in 2005, and has been a regular PC user since then. He goes to Bombay Scottish School, where kids are introduced to – Paint, Wordpad and a few other simple things from 1st Grade. I dont want to get into a debate on whether this is correct or not, since I believe that this familiarity is a necessity now. If you were born into a farmer’s family in any village in India, you would probably know the business end of a Cow by the age of 3 – wouldnt you?

In 2nd Grade, as he started writing sentences, and graduated to using Word in the school computer class. I got him to start planning homework, playtime, game time and vacations on Google Calendar, at about the same time.

Now in the 4th grade, he has his own Club Penguin account, uses Gmail regularly, has a Facebook account, uses Wikipedia like a Pro, and does his school work research online. Over the last couple of years the school has moved to a more Projects oriented teaching approach, and this means the kids are collecting pictures of historical monuments for history class, and maps for Geography class, … and so on – on a day-to-day basis.

Our kids are true Digital Natives and they need their ID’s as much as any professional does. Ishaan’s school unfortunately is not yet on Google Apps, and perhaps this is the real next step in ensuring that they have a safe(r) and more supervised online presence. Perhaps this will go on to projects and assignments being collated online and published on each student’s own Google Sites pages, or in Google Docs.

My son is also on Blogger and I have been trying to get him to start writing a daily blog on what he did in school, or anything really of his own liking, as a regular writing exercise. I think this will help him express himself better, pick up a vocabulary, engage in some planning and pacing of his day while, at the same time, recording his days for laughs, once he grows up. For me, though its more about developing as ability to wield a tool that’s pervasive and the proverbial ‘swiss knife’ for our digitally permeated lives.

Back to the loss of the ID. I talk to my kids about new stuff, and have been explaining whats happening with Facebook and Twitter and Google+ etc almost on a daily basis. This is not a lecture series, and neither is it a technical discussion, but is a bit more like giving them bits of input so they understand these services as tools of social organisation. Ishaan got his Google+ invite, since he is in my Family circle where I want to share family pictures from my phone camera. Now G+ requires a Date of Birth as a required field while creating one’s profile, and that’s where the trouble started.

We signed him up with his actual Date of Birth, 17 Dec 2002, and – disaster struck immediately. Google disabled his ID for underage use, and gave notice of 30 days before the ID will be permanently deleted. A permanent delete means that the same ID can never be created again.

I went thru a bunch of blogs and forums, and found lots of people who have faced a similar situation. I was aware of the 13 years rule as that happens to be the youngest possible age for legal consent, required for Acceptance of Terms of Service etc, but never took it seriously. I feel this is one of those anachronistic regulations that will probably outlive us all.

I think it is time to overhaul our understanding of the laws and regulations governing online services, and start acknowledging that there is no practical way to remove them from our lives. And more importantly from the lives of our kids, who havent known any other way of life.

While we grew up on Dictionaries & Encyclopedias, Comics and Libraries – our kids live in the a fascinating new world that is bursting with brands like Google & Apple, Facebook & Wikipedia. The loss of a Primary Digital ID is a real loss, very tangible and disturbing and perhaps – irreplaceable in the lives of our kids who have known no other id’s.

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I would like you to watch this TV Commercial that Google has been running globally, and shows a father creating a Gmail account for his newborn daughter, which eventually becomes a collection of mails – perhaps to be presented – to the daughter on her 13th birthday…?

This campaign implies that a Google ID is an important part fo life even for a new-born, as a store of memories [blogs, photos, videos...] and a means of communication throughout life.

A few other incidental findings -

1. Google does not require a Date of Birth [doesn't even ask for one...] to sign up for Gmail
2. Google enforces Date of Birth as a required sign-up field only on its Social Apps [Orkut, G+]
3. Google provides a Credit Card Validation [$0.30 transaction] to restore any disabled accounts, via Google Checkout.
4. An alternative method to validate your Age is by Faxing [WHAT...?] your Government issued ID with Age prominently displayed – to Google.

I chose the Credit Card Validation method to restore the ID.

All said and done, the 24 hours that it took me to figure out the means to restore the ID were sheer remorse.

I guess the number of 6-13 year old Digital Natives, currently online and using Google/Facebook ID’s to be in the 100′s of millions. Obviously all of them are ‘Illegal Immigrants’ and deserve to be thrown offline immediately. Hardly likely!