So here’s an interesting “what the heck is social networking really all about?” issue: your (under-age) child has a Facebook account. You look at it, see that he’s engaging in dangerous, illegal activities, and hack into the account to send him a message. But you go even further and say bad things about him on his account. What have you done wrong, and who should be in charge of deciding?
We may be about to find out. A sixteen-year-old boy in Arkansas had the unpleasant surprise of finding that his mother had defaced his Facebook account, and has filed a criminal complaint against her. The charge is harassment, and (from a non-lawyer’s perspective) I guess her actions fit the definition.
Except she’s his Mother.
There’s a twist in this story. The boy lives with his grandmother, and it’s that woman, rather than his mother, who has custodial rights. So it seems to me that in this case if the grandmother had hacked the account she’d be in the clear. In fact, here’s the passage defining harassment under Arkansas law, courtesy of the prosecutor in the case:
A person commits the offense if with purpose to harass, annoy or alarm another person without good cause, he engages in conduct or repeatedly commits acts that alarm or seriously annoy another person.
Speaking as a parent, and being legally responsible for my one remaining under-age child, I believe that in most places “looking out for my child for whom I am responsible” qualifies as good cause. In this case, it’s grandma and not mom who’s responsible, so mom may have a problem.
But the big issue and the one that matters to anyone using social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter is defining what’s acceptable. And from a business perspective the advice is clear: YOU be clean. Don’t show or describe anything you wouldn’t be OK with having absolutely anyone know about when you’re on-line, and don’t expect privacy, because in the world of on-line social networking there is none.
And in spite of the New Jersey Supreme Court recently ruling otherwise, don’t believe there’s any privacy in your email, either.
By the way: Yes, I’m connected to my children in various social networking places. And no, I would never hack their accounts. Except for my 16-year-old. If I thought he might be getting himself into a dangerous or illegal place. BECAUSE THAT’S A PARENT’S JOB.
And he’s chosen simply not to do social networking. Which probably makes him smarter than the rest of us.
