So you’re about to buy your kid their first smartphone. In Israel, second graders have smart phones. I have opinions about the age that you do that and monitoring usage and so on, but that’s not what this is about. This is about their camera.
And no, it’s not about using the camera to send graphic images of themselves or others. Plenty of other people have written about that. This is about using the camera as an opportunity to teach consent. The more your kids understand issues of consent the safer and more confident they will be as they are on their own in the world.
Here was the inspiration for this post. The other day I entered my classroom and teenagers had asked one of their classmates to stand there, in the doorway to await my arrival. Why? There has been a long-standing joke, mostly because of Zoom, that the girl and I look similarly and that day, we happened to both be wearing jeans and a purple sweater. Her classmates wanted to snap a picture of us without asking me first. Said picture would have become a funny meme, nothing viral, nothing too mean, and not a big deal honestly. However, that day I had a massive headache. I’ve been having some problems with my eyes and a chronic twitch. I was in no mood for a picture or a flash. As I saw the phones come out, I backed away. I told them: I do not give you consent to take my picture. Put your phones away. The language of consent meant something to them, and they listened. I don’t know if one was taken before I said it, which would be annoying, but that sentence and the “Ms. Marcus” tone did get their phones back in their bags.
This isn’t the first time that this has been an issue. We had a bird stuck in one of the vents. One of the students insisted on videographing the maintenance man taking it out. It told him he had to ask. He said, “Even if he says no, I’m doing it.” I told him, you can’t video people without their consent, especially at work. What if he makes a mistake and it costs him his job? What if he doesn’t like to be on camera? What if he’s just not feeling well? The student responded to the word consent and asked the maintenance man if he minded. He said no, and the student got the footage, which was quite cool.
In the era of Tik Tok, Youtube, Snap, publish photos with abandon, often for the pure purpose of mocking or embarrassing someone as a form of humor. Teach your kids that to take such an image/video is not part of their moral compass, and that they have the right to say to someone, anyone, no matter who it is, I do not give you consent to take my photo or video me. Empower them to own their image because after all, it is an extension of their bodies. Repeat this message several times over the course of the year because the temptation to be funny at someone else’s expense is great and saying no to being the butt of someone else’s joke, for an adolescent, is hard - as is most everything involving issues of consent.
Postscript: The girl who kind of looks like me (she doesn’t actually) apologized, even though she wasn’t the one with the cameras. I told her I wasn’t upset with her, I just didn’t like having my photograph taken without my consent. Then the next day I heard her telling her classmates to stop saying she looked at me. She didn’t like it and didn’t want to hear it anymore. I think the fact that I asserted myself set an example for her to assert herself.
