Zapped by Ads
RSSDo free computer labs blast kids with ads and invade their privacy?
Walter Minkel -- School Library Journal, 08/01/2000
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Wait a minute, you may be thinking--there's no such thing as a free lunch--er, lab. What's the catch? The catch is that ZapMe's software exposes students to ads targeted at them. Students using the lab are given login names and passwords, and while the system does not collect personal data, it records whether the student is male or female, and ties the ads and Web pages each student visits to the student's gender and the school's ZIP code. This information is then sold to corporate sponsors. Although ZapMe says it bends over backward not to invade the privacy of students, its methods anger many education activists.
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Wait a minute, you may be thinking--there's no such thing as a free lunch--er, lab. What's the catch? |
About 1,500 schools have accepted ZapMe's offer since 1998, and many of those schools' staffs are pleased. Debbie Hall, a librarian at Bellaire (TX) High School, says that the ZapMe lab at her school--which has a multicultural student body of over 3,000--was very much needed. Although Bellaire High has six computer labs, "they are scheduled for classes all day," says Hall. "We are at our limits as far as building space is concerned. We do not have adequate funding for technology. Teachers have nowhere to bring a class for Internet researching except the library and the ZapMe lab," which is located in a far corner of the library. While the one-way satellite technology that links the ZapMe computers to the Web isn't very fast (top speed is about 20 kilobaud, as compared to the 56 kilobaud of most current modems), Hall feels it has worked well. The satellite link wires the lab without any physical cabling. And no parents have objected to their children being exposed to online ads.
Several writers and education activists, however, have written letters and articles criticizing ZapMe's marketing strategy and use of advertising. Nancy Willard, project director for the Center for Advanced Technology in Education at the University of Oregon (
netizen.uoregon.edu), believes that schools should not sign up students for programs like ZapMe's. She feels that teachers and administrators participating in such programs are "selling out" students. Teachers, says Willard, "have a duty to find out in explicit detail exactly what the actions and intentions of the company are, and to explain this clearly to the parents."|
There have long been ads in school and public libraries, on the Net and off. |
ZapMe CEO Rick Inatome sees ZapMe as an Internet service provider (ISP) for students and schools. He claims that ZapMe is actually more conscientious about respecting students' privacy than other ISPs, such as America Online and MSN. Plans are also in the works for future ZapMe programs in which schools can pay for high-end computer labs without corporate sponsorship. "We do not provide any individual data to our sponsors," Inatome says. "We have a policy of anonymity: we don't allow students to use their real names or addresses. We give our sponsors aggregate information. Other ISPs allow personal profiling." But it's the issue of ads that rouse his strongest statements: "When anyone provides you Net access, children are going to see ads."
In fact, there have long been ads in school and public libraries, on the Net and off. Ken Umbach of the California State Library notes that every library contains magazines and newspapers. "Plainly, we all seem to agree that advertising in magazines and newspapers is an entirely acceptable trade-off," says Umbach. "As for ZapMe, is that a satisfactory trade-off? Much is in the eye of the beholder--and perhaps in his institution's wallet."
The critics are missing the point. All of us using Web sites are tracked, cookie-ized, and bombarded by advertising. Librarians need to train students to be information literate, and the abilities to distinguish ads from information, and to evaluate the claims and gimmicks in ads, are critical facets of information literacy. Librarians need to educate themselves about what offers like ZapMe's entail, and be ready to share their expertise when adminstrators and communities go for that free lunch.
