Facebook to lift its ban on users under 13: your thoughts?

www.businessinsider.com/facebook-bankers-earnings-forecasts-2012-5

I block facebook ads with Adblock Plus add-on for Firefox. I think most adults have developed severe banner blindness by now but kids may indeed look at ads more attentively, and there's no need for them to be doing this.

DS has had one since he was 10 - mostly to keep up with old friends from before we moved. Used my email address to sign up.
He's hardly ever been on it since. I've looked at his fb page more than he has.
I find the whole fb thing very over-rated tbh. I have a feeling they want to drop the age limit because people are beginning to lose interest.

The other problem is that banned children often set up FB pages in false names - so their parents don't know what they are doing and can't find out.

My DSD who is 15 has been banned from having FB for almost 2 years now. She was obsessed with it, spent far too much time on it and her school work suffered.

The final straw was when one of her year group left to go to another school and her mum claimed she had been bullied - some of it through FB. A number of DSD's friends were implicated and it all got very nasty.

More recently there have been a couple of instances of girls and boys posting naked photos of each other on their own and sometimes anonymous FB pages - all very unpleasant and worrying.

Personally, I think 13 is too young, it should be 18. I have seen some shocking things on young teenagers and younger childrens FB pages. They are generally not responsibile enough and the majority of parents don't monitor their childrens use at all.

DD is in Yr6, lots of her friends have accounts but I made DS wait until he was 13 and want to do the same with her but have thinking about relenting when she starts high school so that is not the odd one out.
So I will be pleased if they do change the rule, so I won't need to change mine.

I am amazed by how little security some people have on fb.

I'm with you- the big problem with FB is parents who don't know how to use it, don't understand privacy settings, friending etc etc- just like me! However, DH does which is what matters!

usualsuspect, it's the internet savvy parents whose kids tend to use it properly, I've concluded. The ones who are scared of the internet don't use the internet, and have never used Facebook or other social network sites, are the ones most against it, and the ones whose kids tend to misuse it, I've found.

You do know that you can limit what certain fb friends can see on your wall don't you?

I think some people need to learn how to use FB security settings and then maybe they wouldn't be so scared of their children using it.

and funnily enough, all the holier than though parents who slag off Facebook and refused access until their kids were 13... those kids are the ones abusing Facebook, generally speaking. Kinda ironic

good point peanut

Ironic & IME very naive to boot :)

and funnily enough, all the holier than though parents who slag off Facebook and refused access until their kids were 13... those kids are the ones abusing Facebook, generally speaking. Kinda ironic.

I agree totally with Soupdragon... my eldest dd has been using Facebook since she was about 10 and went on it lots at first (supervised by me and I had the password) and now she very rarely goes on it. If I'd waited to give her access on her 13th birthday after years of denying access, I know she'd go mad, jump in at the deep end etc.... she's bored of it now and never goes on it.

to be honest all the Facebook trouble seems to occur with the over 13's not the under 13's! I know several under 13's on Facebook and they just have fun on it whereas the over 13's I see when I'm spying on my daughters newsfeed can be awful, bitchy and unpleasant. Most kids use it properly though (from checking my daughters news feed and wall, I can see that most of them are being pleasant, having a laugh, chit chat etc.. why should a minority of chavspawn spoil it for the rest of youth?

mammanetta - Don't you think that's a rather simplistic view though? Surely you realise that most under 13s are 'Out there' already? FB is just another facet to their lives.

No, facebook shouldn't lift it's ban. I know that many parents supervise their children's use, but I also think that some would assume that Facebook was now suitable for under 13's without any adult supervision.

Having said that, I have no problem with an under 13 year old having access to Facebook, as long as their parents have access to their child's page and know everything that is posted. If they leave embarrassing comments, illustrating to their child that Facebook is not private, so much the better.

On the other hand, I wouldn't let an under 13 year old have access to a computer that wasn't in a main living area, and I wouldn't let them use the computer if I wasn't there.

Re: adopted and fostered children and social media, there was an article about it here
www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/jun/19/facebook-adoption-tracing-birth-mother.

No - under 13's need to be out there, with their real friends and making real new friendships with kids their own age in person. FB is too impersonal and also possibly leading them to think they have loads of cyber friends...which are at best numbers and nothing else. Potential bullying problems too would be enough to put me off as well.

& not 7 !

It has to be said that the girls (in general) post way too many photos of themselves pouting into their phone camera.

I think there is an argument that letting them have it earlier gets all this crap out of their system before they reach mid teens and are, IMO, more emotionally vulnerable.

What I've seen from logging on as DS2 (11) is how supportive they do seem to be - lots of responses to posts with things like "You OK? Want to chat?" (although in far worse English :o) Some of these friends are actually from DS1's primary school class so 2 years older.

My twelve year old son is on FB 7 has been since he was eleven. We have the rule that I'm all over it like a rash, or no FB. I look at everything and often. I take the view that this isn't going away, so embrace it.

I don't want mine on there...she would see the uber crap that friends of her friends posted....nightmare. Some people link to very unsuitable sites and videos.

I am entirely with soupdragon.

DS1 got a FB account at 12.5 (at the suggestion of MNetters, actually, to try and improve his social integration at school!).

He belongs to only one group, his tutor group, and otherwise has maybe 3 other 'friends'. I must say, though, that it's the girls on there who'd give me more cause for alarm! A couple have made their photos available to all and a few of the pictures are a bit close to the mark, shall we say! Anyway, with DS, yes, we have the passwords, have ramped up the security settings, had The Chat etc. And we talk a lot about 'stuff'. So we have done what we can to ensure his on-line 'safety'. But we know we can't always protect him against getting inappropriate photos of him, drunk at 17 etc put on FB by others.

I guess another factor for me is that I am older than a lot of mums so my friends don't use FB to chat at all.I wouldn't want my younger work mates to see some stuff I might write, either- I write far more incendiary stuff here on MN, but I'm anonymous here!

Finally, fwiw, I think FB will crash and burn in a couple of years. 'Valuing' it at however much they have is really like plucking a figure out of thin air. I am still amazed that in 2012, no one has mentioned the Emperor's New Clothes and that FB advertising really isn't worth those sums of money. Do you ever even glance at the ads?

I don't accept friend requests from any children I know, up to at least 16yo as I don't want to have to censor my own conversations (not that I swear etc on FB). I don't think Facebook is the right place for kids, but think that they should have something similar just for them which is a lesser site, for chat and photos. I'd make adding someone practically impossible unless you know every little bit of info about them, so you know you are only adding friends.

I'd also suggest that when the kids set it up they have to input their parents email address, in order that the parent is kept in the loop of passwords etc.

I also think that young DCs shouldn't have smartphones and should use a communal PC. I am an ogre.

"Adoptive/foster parents are not allowed to change their child's birth name so if they have a very unusual name, it would be horribly easy to track them down if you were so inclined."

Well, several of my children's friends are not registered on FB under their real names so having an unusual real name is irrelevant. Of course, if you know any of their friends' names you can hop through friend lists and find them if they have photos or other identifying info. However, for the vast majority of children, this isn't an issue is it?

WRT personal messages and online chat, no I can't supervise that. However, I know my children and I know everyone on their friend list and based on that I trust them. TBH, they barely use FB anyway. DS1 is now 13 and, obviously, once he went to secondary school I lost control of knowing who his friends are. I can tell he is fine though by watching his behaviour - there is no cyber bullying going on there for example. I can't control what they can't about online in the same way I can't control what they chat about at school. I can make sure that the parental controls are in place to avoid "accidental" discovery of porn and we have had The Chat about internet safety, what to do if they come across something inappropriate and that they and talk to me about anything - I won't be angry.

I have done my personal risk assessment and I am happy with how things are working. As DS1 gets older I will have a chat to him about how he should think about what he posts and how it will be there forever. His school had a huge lecture about FB postings a year back after a prospective parent printed out page of what she deemed "inappropriate" postings from pupils and sent it to the headmaster. He is therefore already aware that there can be consequences.

WRT alcohol, sex and driving cars, yes I would let my children do those things earlier if I was certain that it was safe, in a controlled environment and they were protected. In the case of cars, obviously this would be on private land and completely supervised! As children we all had a go at driving a car on private land before turning 17 and we also had a moped we used to ride round our garden (I must have been under 11 for that now I think of it).

Insofar as making tho children about boundaries, I disagree. I think it has made mine realise that when I do say no, it is for a very good reason and I mean it. They know that if I think something OK then I will agree albeit with certain restrictions/conditions.

Everyone makes their own decisions for their own children. Whatever the given age limit on FB, if you do not deem it right for your child then don't let them have it.

If a child is savy and have a good open relationship with the parents and there are no circumstnaces which could make life difficult then I can understand the appeal. However, I am a tad scared of Facebook as my Stalker resurfaced the minute I set up an account. Needless to say as soon as I twigged I closed it down again as did DH but it still makes me shudder to think. As Mrbojangles just said school uniforn alone could help someone to figure out the location of someone and as we live on the same street as my dc's school I don't even want to take the risk. I can't stop everyone putting up photos of myself and my children and I can't prevent the people I know from accepting strangers as freinds to make their friend count look good but I can, for the time being, keep my family off of the site. My worry would be that families in familiar circumstances would find themselves either being put at risk by their young child being on line and not fully understanding the implications or by having to scare the life out of young children by explaining to them that there is some crazy person out there who if they found out where we lived could possible hurt us. I am not ready to have that kind of conversation with my children. I don't want to have to talk to them about what happened to me untill they are old enough to understand and I dread the day that such a conversation needs to be had.
I know there are children using it at the moment and maybe it is a good thing if it means more safeguards but I really do think that some children under the age of 13 are too young to fully understand the wider implications.