User blog:JessicaFin23/My Concerns With Underaged Children on FANDOM

During my past few years as a FANDOM contributor, I've always had a few concerns regarding certain users, mostly the ones that are always spamming or vandalizing, but the users I'm concerned about the most are the ones who are underage.

I've encountered quite a few underaged users in the past, and having to deal with users who are younger than thirteen can be rather tiring and a bit stressful. But lately, I've had to deal with an underaged user who has been quite a handful.

Ever since mid-2019, I've had to deal with a user who has been using many different accounts and claims to be underage. She's the one I'm the most concerned about out of all the underaged users I've met in the past. Her name is [hidden to protect the innocent], and she could be either Brazilian or Portuguese. On one of the wikis she frequently edits, she talked about her poor relationship with her mother, who is dating a man that she doesn't care for, and when she grows up, she wants to become a famous singer and voice actor. But as far as I can tell, the girl can't speak English very well and has poor grammar, so I try as much as I can to fix her extremely broken English whenever she edits pages. However, I only do this when she edits pages on fanon wikis, and I'll explain the reason why in a minute.

Anyway, the girl says that she is ten years old, which is violating FANDOM's rules about being unable to join if you're under thirteen.

She is constantly adding false/fan-made information to pages on wikis that are meant for canon content rather than fanon content. Despite most of her edits being minuscule, they are still an inconvenience (even if it's minor) to other users. Sometimes, she also leaves nonsensical messages on other people's message walls, which mostly have absolutely nothing to do with the wikis that they're contributing to. A lot of people keep asking her to stop adding false information to their pages and adding incomprehensible messages to their walls, but she never listens.

Even though the girl seems pretty innocent most of the time and seldom misbehaves, she sometimes has a rather naughty mouth and is kind of dirty-minded, especially for someone her age, and she seems to fully understand a variety of mature or adult-themed topics that young children her age would not be able to. She also sometimes edits pages on wikis that are absolutely not meant for children and she's not afraid to use profanity and/or violent threats if she feels like it's necessary. For example, in one wiki, she left a message in my wall that had both the B-word and the F-word, and another message had violent material, almost like she was threatening me for no good reason. Even though those messages had broken English, I could clearly understand that she was trying to threaten me for no good reason. On another wiki, she used the same kind of profanity on another user's message wall for no good reason whatsoever. I've tried to tell her that using that kind of language is very rude, especially if she's just a child, but as usual, she doesn't listen.

Because of her false information-filled edits, nonsensical messages, her tendency to use naughty words at times, and her inability to listen, I have to keep a close eye on her whenever she comes across a wiki and starts editing pages there.

I thought that something has to be done about the girl, because she's not staying in accordance with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. I wrote a report about her and sent it to the FANDOM Staff, and they are doing as best as they can to take care of the girl because she is underage. However, while they're doing a good job keeping some of the accounts she's made in check and making sure that she's staying in accordance with COPPA, they still have quite a long way to go. As far as I can tell, she's still using one of those accounts to edit wikis, and even though they're very small, minor edits like usual, they still have the same false/fan-made information that she makes up. Even when she's not using any of her accounts and is editing under an anonymous user ID, I can still tell that it's her because of her ridiculously broken English. Every day, I check all the wikis that the girl has been editing, just to make sure that she isn't adding any false information to any of the pages. It's kind of exhausting, to say the very least, because when I keep track of the wikis that [removed] has made her mark on, I don't know when she might come back to one of those wikis just to add her usual fan-made content or leave a message on someone's wall that they might not be able to understand, or if she's found a new wiki to edit and is doing the same kind of nonsense there. I just hope that the FANDOM staff does something about the girl soon, because having to check on her every day has been making me burned out.

But while my encounters with the girl have been both tiring me out and getting in the way of helping out other users, it got me thinking about how underaged kids shouldn't be on social media sites, especially FANDOM.

As everyone knows, a lot of social media websites prevent kids who are under thirteen from signing up. FANDOM does the same. Many social media sites, including this one, have policies prohibiting children from signing up. According to COPPA, it's illegal for websites and apps to allow children under 13 to open an online account without their parents' permission. Still, most children are smart enough to get around this rule by using a parent's e-mail and a fake birth date, often with permission.

If a child who is twelve or under creates an account on a social media site, it could sometimes be a recipe for trouble. When they are younger, some kids are impulsive and don't think before they act. They can't think through their feelings before they post comments just to embarrass their friends or family members or get revenge on them if they made them mad. Kids who are twelve or under are very likely to post inappropriate or unnecessary photos or videos, make rude, negative comments about their friends if they are mad at them, or hijack another person's account without their permission.

Whether or not a child should have social media is ultimately up to the parent's choice. The parent has every right and should monitor a child's social media usage, especially since they are the ones providing the mobile device. By monitoring, I mean they should have access to see what their child posts, not their actual accounts.

Social media use by kids is becoming increasingly popular. Therefore, parents need to become familiar with social media sites and how to use them and to monitor their children online. According to a poll done by Common Sense Media, 22% of teenagers log on to their favorite social media site more than ten times a day, and more than 50% of adolescents log on to a social media site more than once a day. Younger children are also logging on to social media sites at an undeniably higher rate. Just like adults, young people want to be on social media, because it helps them connect with friends, share knowledge and express themselves. Ultimately, since these sites have no reliable security guard turning back underage children, it's up to parents to take on the role.

Parents of younger children tend to be a bit more sensitive about the content that is posted about their child. Among those parents are the ones who only have children age eleven or younger. Some say they have ever felt uncomfortable about something a spouse, family member, or friend posted about their child on social media. This compares with other parents who only have children age twelve and older. It is difficult to know what age is appropriate for children to open their own social media account. But what is clear is that expert advice and rules imposed by social media companies are being largely ignored by parents and by children desperate to join their friends online.

All in all, I believe that kids who are under the age of thirteen shouldn't be on social media, because they could cause some major trouble if they sign up on a social media website and they're too young. That goes for young children who want to join FANDOM. If they're underage and aren't able to understand the rules of contributing to wikis, then they shouldn't join until they're old enough to understand. I believe that all children on social media need to follow COPPA and stay in accordance with it. That goes for the aforementioned girl as well, but since she rarely listens to other users and doesn't properly understand English, it could be quite difficult.

I certainly hope that the FANDOM staff is finding a way to get the girl to listen and understand that what she's doing is wrong and that she is too young to be on FANDOM, and also allow her to come back by the time she turns thirteen. Hopefully, at that time, she'll start listening to others more, following the rules, and understand what kind of content is appropriate for a certain wiki and what isn't.