Cervantes Magazine Number 24: Plagiarism and Abuse

reimerlin (53)in #cervantes • 6 years ago (edited)

"Childhood", so beautiful and delicate, a word that projects innocence, tenderness, protection. When we hear it, children, grandchildren, nephews, and even our own childhood, come to mind right away. It is then when we realize that life has changed, the way we play, learn, communicate and interact is not what it used to be.

Social networks have modified the way we show ourselves. We show the world who we are, what we have, what we do, what we like, where we are going and with whom. We expose our lives to everyone and to our family. Without giving any account and without malice, we show the image of the smallest of the house, sharing their photographs on social networks. Also in so-called “third world” countries, making publications about routines, schedules and activities, can be quite dangerous.

It is not as if t it is prohibited, but you have to be careful with the type of images that are published. Since we are their parents and they are minors, we can not think that we have all the freedom in the world to publish their life on social networks. Children are not a property, they are people and as people have rights, one of them is the right to self image and it is our responsibility to respect it until they can make the decision to expose themselves or not.

As we already know, Steemit is a wonderful place where we all share a part of our lives, activities, knowledge, learning, and we can also receive rewards for it. It is natural for a user to be a happy father or mother, and shout from the rooftops how beautiful his little one is and how proud he/she feels.
This could lead to a very nice publication on paternity, but a different thing is to publish daily photographs of a child, even if it’s yours, that could be taken as abuse, because it would be making a lucrative use of the image of a person, who because of his or her young age can not decide whether he/she agrees or not, to share moments of his/her childhood so that other users can value him/her, and their parents making profit from it.

There’s also cases of children with more advanced ages in which they already socialize with other children, know social networks and use them, and parents with entire libraries of photographs and videos of their children that they love to share. The most logical thing would be for these parents to consult with the children before publishing, since for the child it may be an intimate situation, which he/she prefers not to leave the house. What parents see as something tender and fun for the child can lead to embarrassing situations in the present and in the future. It would be dishonest to take advantage of it, right?

It would also be unethical to obtain benefits from the creativity of minors without their consent. Parents of creative children may find it a wonderful idea to publish about their children's drawings or even open a secondary account by usurping the child's identity because they think they are not old enough to use the platform.

If the minor does not have an adequate age to manage a platform, even with supervision, it is best to let him/her grow and document everything possible, save his/her drawings, projects, who knows maybe in a few years he/she will be interested in talking about them in this platform. If, on the other hand, the child already has knowledge and makes regular use of networks, the most appropriate thing would be to provide information about Steemit, explain how it works, the possibilities and achievements that can be obtained by his/her work. Ideally, have your own account where you can share your creations.

As you know, when you open an account in Steemit it is not necessary to enter a birth date or age. This doesn’t mean that minors don’t need supervision. Always maintain an open communication and a trusting environment, where parents can inform their children about any kind of dangers, scams or malicious people who may be found, so that the child doesn’t feel self-conscious to communicate their parents what is happening. In addition, in the case of a platform where part of the reward is monetary, you should have a backup copy of the minors' passwords.

As you can see, nowadays we have to protect everything with passwords, before we only needed a door with a lock and keys, and for a friend or relative to see a photo, he had to go to your house and have your mother take out the 1987 - 2000 collection of albums. Some laughter, some nostalgia, but nobody could take a photo, make a copy or share it. Now with just a smartphone anyone can download, copy, edit images and videos. Therefore, it is the duty of parents to protect the identity, integrity, innocence and child development of their kids. You have to think that these children will one day be teenagers, then adults and maybe they will not like the use you gave to their images.