For sometime now I’ve considered writing a post on the problems with web surveys and quizzes. These tricky techniques use old-fashioned fun, emulating the magazine quiz features of the past and encouraging web users to happily divulge all sorts of personal information. Each of these activities is a small privacy invader using a “have fun and learn more” guise.
Instead of writing more on this subject here on MediaTech Parenting, I suggest your head over to visit the I Look Both Ways blog, where Linda Criddle has posted Online Quizzes and Surveys and the Real Risks These Represent. Linda’s post offers a comprehensive overview of the subject along with supplemental images.
Focus family digital conversations on the reasons these surveys exist, and ask your children to help generate ideas that can help everyone take more care when these features show up on websites and social media destinations. Moreover, if your experience is similar to mine, you may also need to have the same conversation with your quiz-taking friends. Almost every day, via e-mail, Facebook, or some other social media activity, I receive notices from acquaintances encouraging me to take the surveys that have just finished. My answer is always “NO thanks!”
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