..to be absolutely horrified at what I see some 11yr old girls post on facebook?? ...

[nelehluap]

My eldest DD is 12yrs old. A lot of her mates are still 11. These same 'mates' have facebook. like DD1 does. DD1 rarely goes on her facebook because she finds it all rather boring and all too easy to see friends fall out because of comments put on there and she hates being dragged into fall-outs.

Last night I decided to have a look around her facebook (she knows I do this and because she rarely goes on it she's not that bothered that I do, and even asks me to have a look)....

I was SHOCKED.....some of her 'friends' on there (girls she knows from school but not exactly close friends) have photos of themselves (bearing in mind they're only 11yrs old) - somewhere in the region of 200 photos each - of just themselves - taken with the use of mirrors in various rooms (ie photos of them holding their cameras/phones using reflections from mirrors) wearing the skimpiest, shortest, most revealing outfits and standing in some of the most provocative poses I've seen from such young individuals. One girl - she has about 187 photos of just her...wearing really tight extremely low cut tops (she is well developed) with the pictures of just her breasts...pictures of her in tiny short black dresses holding up the hem of her dress (more like a t-shirt) with nothing on her legs....and the make-up is plastered all over her face...

I see photos of girls taken in changing rooms of places such as primark - whereby they choose clothing off the rails, go to the changing rooms, get changed and take photos, only to get changed again with another outfit (you can see piles of clothes in the changing room) and then walk out in their own stuff, leaving the piles in the changing rooms.

The language that is used on facebook between themselves is shocking also....words such as 'biaatch', the f-word gets used a great deal too and is often seen used in 'rofl', 'wtf', 'lmfao'....AND THEY ARE 11? I even saw one girl say to a friend 'oh, did you suck him off then?' ....

I will be talking to DD1 this morning with the view of pressing the delete button a few times on her facebook today...to remove some of these so called friends that she knows at school....but I'm half afraid it'll only leave her with a handful of friends on there...the classic comment that I saw last night was....'hurry up crimbo, I want my stuff'....how rude and disrespectful is that? I'm the least religious person out there but is that how they see Christmas? Clearly it is.

What has happened to the kids in them? What has happened to the nice, sweet, innocent, naive kids? I was too busy out there playing, making dens, having fun, CHATTING to my mates.... Or am I just becoming very old-fashioned???

shanahan....I have seen it before but not quite this bad. Something happens to girls when they go into senior school (Year 7) and it seems they suddenly want to grow up, look more mature and more 'chav' (as my DD puts it)...maybe its because they are now with kids at school a lot older than them, I don't know. But, yes, I have seen it before, but never this bad.

2blessed...'her own netbook'...exactly...and why? so that she frees up the household computer? so she can go on it when she wants?

Jenai....yes, they are posing very provocatively....photos of just breasts? is that not provacative? bending over with a very short skirt on, showing the bottom of a thong, cheeks of a backside? is that not provacative? bending over with the girl having her middle finger in her mouth?...

sorry, but all that falls within the 'provacative' category as far as I'm concerned...AT 11YRS OLD.

And, no matter what, I think it is utterly appalling to hear a child swear.

I should point out that the 'f' in 'rofl' stands for 'floor'.

nah see earlier coalition it's ff - fucking floor

There was an interesting story in the Sunday Times magazine this weekend about how the internet has warped many teenagers' views of sex. The main culprit, says the article, is the ready availability of online porn, but I think Facebook fans the flames by encouraging girls to make themselves seem more highly sexualised and available than they actually are. I think young girls talking casually about sex at a very young age (whether or not they are just fantasising)spells problems for their sexuality later on.

Thanks to porn, many boys think girls should enjoy extreme sex, anal sex, group sex, and, crucially, be always up for it 24/7. One teenage boy in the ST article said he was tempted to be very rough with his (virgin) girlfriend as he had absorbed so many violent pornographic images as an impressionable boy. He only stopped when someone walked in on them.

Heaven help young teens setting out on their early sexual experiences when they imagine they have to lay on a smorgasbord of exotic sexual behaviours to please a partner.

The article is shocking, and the depressing thing is nothing is being done.

Seriously, we used to dress up in our mums' stuff and attempt (lamely, given our lack of boobage) to recreate Page 3 poses. We proabably thought we looked provocative or "sexy" but, being 11, the only person who'd have been remotely impressed would have been the neighbourhood paedophile. But like I said, we weren't able to record and share this in any way - no photos (too expensive to process for one thing), no Internet.

olderandwider I've not read that article - although I have read others. It's really scary stuff.

I think we should get a grip to be honest and deal with that, instead of getting all antsy about 10yos wearing "hooker" (ffs!) boots. It's why I just cannot get excited about the Let Girls Be Girls thing - which, imo, totally misses the point.

my cousin is 11, and i was horrified by her commenting on a "friends" status.

There were a load of kids all discussing one girl that the friend was dating. How she is a slut, and bitching about her. Apparently my cousin is even friends with the girl. Turns out through the convo that the guy only pretended to ask this girl out to humiliate her. The poor thing kept saying but you guys are supposed to be my friends. :(

children are all products of environment, lets not forget this. i tried to watch some music videos on mtv (or viva or whatever channel it was) with my young son, to try and enlighten him into the world of music, but had to turn it over because every video included a scantily clad woman simulating sex in some way.
if these are the images that bombard our children, is it any wonder they replicate them when they themselves are at an age when they are trying to "grow up".
unitl the media gets out of their "sex sells" ideology, we are destined to have pre-teens and teenagers reproducing the actions of their role models

jenai...i agree re the dressing up thing when we were kids but NOW kids can display this images on a SOCIAL NETWORKING SITE...open for all to see....

Only the other day, front page news on the Sun (I don't buy it, dh does) was an article of two kids becoming parents, and they were just 13 yrs old when the baby was conceived.

Disgusting.

I don't just blame the parents...I blame peer pressure too...I do think there is a 'child' in every child....but they feel they have to keep up with everyone else - whether it be the way they dress, behave, swear etc....so to be included...unlike DD1 who isn't like this and is now finding herself on the outside, looking in, unhappy with what she sees/hears.

I have just sat with her going thru her friends on facebook...she had 137 friends on there this morn. She now has just under 40.

Anyone can register on facebook - I even know of a 6yr old who has her own page.

Children have always sworn (not in earshot of their parents maybe but that doesnt mean it doesnt happen!), and girls have always worn make up, and dressed up. none of this is new - 20 odd years ago when I was that age, my friends all were, and thought I was weird as I wasn't allowed to wear foundation when they were going to school fully made up every day.

The only difference is that it's all published now, and the internet has made everything more available.

...and I think also kids are developing a lot younger these days....not all, I admit, but there are girls out there who are only 11yrs old who are extremely well developed in the breast area.....

I can't remember when I developed 'up top' but I certainly didn't want to show them off and was more one to cover up! Fortunately I have a DD who is also like that and whilst she'll wear a vest-top in the summer she'd never dream of showing a bra strap and certainly nothing low-cut and nor would I allow her out of the house dressed like that either....

hatesponge...so you could say, therefore, with the advent of phones with cameras and facebook it has 'encouraged' kids to behave like this?...and has robbed them of their childhood...ie going out to play, behaving in general like kids?

I'm not convinced this behaviour is any more provocative/outrageous than that which I engaged in 20+ years ago.

It is just that these days the internet provides an indelible record of the experimental behaviour that all young girls indulge in.

I can quite clearly recall, aged 10, being at school with a bunch of friends and finding out what a "BJ" was - curiosity was provoked by Just17 and the knowledge passed to us via a friends bigger sister. Of course we all pretended we knew exactly what was being discussed - although none of us had so much as kissed a boy.

We spent much of our time discussing which boys we fancied, dressing up in our mums' underwear, stealing her makeup and making barbie do unspeakable things to Ken

MTV is rank. The whole weird male-fantasy-driven videos in which women are wholly complicit. Why would an intelligent, talented woman actually want to show herself as a male plaything? It is totally bizarre and I have no idea what the answer is. I worry for my DD.

I think there is some kind of emotional disconnection with fb - the kind of really nasty bullying that Evil Dead describes is easier when you're not face to face with the person you're being horrible about. It makes it more of a game.

Modern media does not encourage this behaviour it simply records it.

I agree the internet has a lot to answer for and there is a wealth of both useful and very damaging material to children.

But we are never going to change this. The answer has to lie with parental control - surely?

This reminds me a bit of the X factor suspender thread. It is almost impossible to change society and it's norms - but you can exercise control over what your kids are watching on TV/internet and the like.

I am quite shocked at the mumber of kids who have TVs and computers in their bedrooms ( as well as all the normal DS type stuff) My kids are very young but I certainly wouldn't be happy for them to have unsupervised access to whatever they want. And even with parental control on the internet - they are far more internet savvy than me and can get around it - especially on their phones.

I am a very liberal person and feel there should be freedom of choice etc but it's up to us as parents to protect kids from that freedom for adults.

supervixen "as the mother of a baby girl this terrifies me"...erm,aren't you the lady with the stripper's pole in her living room?!

Its up to parents to teach their kids how to use the internet safely ..its here to stay

I dont know its that different tbh - I was still playing with dolls at 11 but I was in the small minority. I remember a fair few girls in my class at that age having their first boyfriends and going on 'dates', but again they were the minority. Most girls were somewhere in the middle.

My DS is 12. Most of the girls he knows at school do all the pouty posing for pcs on FB, are bright orange due to fake tan, and at weekends dress much older than their ages, yet still very few have boyfriends, go on dates etc. So whilst they might look more grown up, I don't really think they are.

Actually NancyDrew, I think that modern media does encourage this sort of behaviour. On the music video front alone, there was no simulated sex going on in videos when I was younger.

I think the madonna videos were quite racy

I'm fairly sure the age limit on FB is 13 so you could just report these girls to FB and they will investigate their accounts.