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AIBU?

... to be uncomfortable/worried about my 10 year-old niece's FB page?

3 replies

ProbablyJustGas · 15/10/2012 11:25

She has an iPod Touch with internet access, which she uses fairly unsupervised, and over the summer was encouraged by her dad to lie about her age and sign up to Facebook. Apparently several of her friends at school are also lying about their ages and school (ie, naming the high school they will attend, rather than actually attend) so that they too can be on FB and post silly photos of themselves.

DN insists that she only adds people she knows, but her grandmother snooped through the iPod a couple days ago and noted that DN has been chatting with someone who claims to be a 14 year-old teenage fashion model living in New York City. DN's privacy settings on her profile have not always been watertight either. Before I added DN as a friend, I could see several photos of her displayed right there on her timeline, plus the school she had listed and her birthdate. This was despite DN having taken some precautions, such as making sure her profile and cover photos were of her favorite animals. I alerted my SIL when I saw this, and the response I got from her was a bit chilly, but she assured me that she has checked DN's profile (SIL has the password to DN's FB and iPod) and is confident that it is "friends only".

Okay, fine. Leave it with SIL and live and let live, right? But last night, DN took photos of my 6 year-old DSD and posted these on her FB profile, with DSD's first and last name as a tag. DN's iPod Touch conveniently let all of us who see her profile know approximately what neighborhood DN and DSD were in - it wasn't the correct one, but it was on the right side of town.

Neither DH nor I know how we feel about this. The content of the photos themselves is fine - nothing inappropriate. We ourselves have posted photos of DSD on our profiles, but we review our privacy settings regularly. Our family members have posted photos of the kids on FB, but we trust them to keep their profiles private.

So, AIBU not to trust my niece on the internet, even though her mother does?

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BettySwollocksandaCrustyRack · 15/10/2012 11:28

I think it is total madness anyone would let a 10 year old have fb!! I honestly don't know what some parents are thinking!

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missymoomoomee · 15/10/2012 11:31

Report her profile to Facebook, I did this with my 7 year old niece as her profile picture was her in her uniform and it had her Mum and Dads names on there, the area where she lived, her parents were tagging her at places, it scared the shit out of me. FB took it down.

Saying that my 11yo DS has FB as we moved last year so he uses it to keep in touch with people but he doesn't have the password, he doesn't have the app on his phone and he doesn't have any pictures of himself on there and I check it before and after he goes on it its easy to keep control of a child on FB.

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HenriettaChicken · 15/10/2012 11:31

...and that, in a nutshell, is why 10 is far too young.

YANBU. You can do something about the photos of DSD but I'm not sure what you can do about the account.

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