Navigating the Internet Without a License
When I was 14, my father was the half owner of a red-and-white Cessna 150, a 4-seater single engine airplane that had wings above the passengers. When other teenage girls were spending Saturdays on their nails and hair, I was in the co-pilot seat learning to fly.
We took off and landed from a grassy field outside of town, and no one at the Control Tower at the airport could tell it was a young girl asking for permission to use the F105 air lane near Pensacola, Florida.
Before long, I was flying solo. No license of course, since you had to be 16 to get a license. Now that I'm a million-miler on two airlines, I wonder how many unlicensed 14-year-olds are out there in the same airspace as the commercials planes I fly.
You're supposed to be aged 14 before you get a Facebook account. With good reason: You can hurt yourself in cyberspace, and some semi- or demi-adult supervision is useful to make sure that later on you don't get yourself cut out of college admissions or job applications because of a weekend prank on YouTube or Twitter.
But is the Internet the same as heavy machinery? Adam Fuhrer was only 12 years old and attended an elementary school in Toronto , Canada when his Microsoft product reviews and other opinions attracted millions of page views on Redditt.
How should we define "maturity" on a social networking site? Should would-be participants have to pass an emotional sophistication test rather than a birthday? Just as we have to prove we're human by typing those curvy letters and numbers, maybe we need to answer a couple of questions to show we're sober and grownup and can be entrusted not to sacrifice our futures to a present lark. Not so much to protect our fellow travelers, but to make sure the budding pilots don't crash and burn.
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A Cessna 150 only has two seats, and the minimum age for a Facebook signup is 13 ("In order to be eligible to sign up for Facebook, users must be thirteen (13) years of age or older.")