Stipulations and Offerings, TLDR: Terms and Services
Sources:
"According to a UK Study by the Children’s Commission for England, children aged 8-15 sign up for social media services without understanding the Terms & Conditions (T&C). In a survey by the UK regulator Ofcom (2020), 67% of adolescents aged 12-15 agreed that they “usually accept the T&Cs without reading them” due to the inaccessibility of these legal documents. In fact, many T&Cs are intensive in volume and difficulty, with Instagram notably having 17 pages and 5,000 words. Other youth-focused apps also have privacy policies written at an average grade reading level of 12.78 (college level), which is well above the RGL of many users. "
- Bisset (et. al)
The Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) showed in 2013 that the average literacy rate in the U.S. was 270/500, the global average being 273, showing a below average level of reading and comprehension akin to the ability to "Find information that may require low-level paraphrasing and drawing low-level inferences."
Americans are given college level terms and conditions while 54% read at a 6th grade level. Is this a failure of our education systems or the private companies' legal teams? I believe they work hand-in-hand to funnel Americans into mindless consumerism.
If the average citizen is unable to read these terms and conditions, is there truly informed consent?
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