should i let 12 year old have facebook

[jammydodger1]

dd1 has just turned 12 years old, started high school and has grown up immensely recently, she is badgering me for a facebook account, you have to be 13 to have an account but all her friends have one and she wont stop going on about it, 6 months ago she created an account without my knowledge (but foolishly tagged a friend of mine so i closed it down) now she started again, would you let your child have an account which you could access and monitor?

i would not my mates daughter has one she added someone who was claiming to know her form school it was a 40 year old man with no clothing on in his picture

not to mention how many girls have been assaulted killed by people they met on face book

Katie piper no less to was the victim of a acid attack and she was a adult

the difference between faced book and msm is the person has to be given your msn account details any random person can contact you even teachers adding pupils which i think is very dodgy really why cant she see them at school

also awful lot of bullying that goes on between girls starts up on face book thsi will be your daughter digital finger print

collages, universities and employers will google her best off out for now i say

i don't buy this everyone is doing it because their not quite frankly

Isn't there an age limit? For a reason?

Watch it carefully if you want to let her.

when she set up the facebook account i closed down (with help) the first posts were from a younger girl who said that she was now going out with my dd1 boyfriend (came round for tea and played football a few nights a week) and she was going to "get" my dd when they went back to school so i agree wholeheartedly that girls are def worse that boys for being nasty on line, thinking answer no for moment :) and can now add smiley faces!!!

I wouldn't; FB asks that you be 13 & it seems civil/proper to me that users should respect that.

THAT said, when DC do join FB, I will be issuing a lot of warnings about how it looks like a private chat forum but really it's very very public. And full of people saying the stupidest things and in very public ways; lots of remarks/pictured moments which would be throwaway forgotten in an instant get published permanently on FB; they can come back to haunt and haunt you. Then there's cyber-bullying, clique-snubbing done in public ways, predatory types of people, inappropriate photo sharing, and so much more that DC will have to understand about it.

I don't want to have that conversation yet, it's so much to cover, so they can wait until at least 13.

And that, Maypole, is why you talk to your children about internet safety!

No

No, the TOC for Facebook is 13+. Why teach your children that it is OK to be dishonest?

The age limit is purely to do with data protection and what information that can collect about children (the limit is 14 in Spain for example). It has nothing to do with safety whatsoever.

This is a really tough one. DSD had one at age 11 and I really disagreed with it. She has so far had 2 online "relationships" with 18 year old boys that she didn't know (possibly 50 year ol dmen, who knows!)
Has been in trouble for online bullying. Has been laughed at cruelly and humiliated for photos a meber of her family put on of her looking bad. And the least of our worries but still annoyingly puts on photos of herself (now 13) in crop tops with pouty lips and a duck face. Her and all her friends swear on there too. It's fairly horrendous.

However, it is true they do all have it. And although I'm not one for following the pack, I don't want my kids to be outcasts which has happened to pne girl in DSD's class. She never gets invited to things cause it happens all over facebook. She also has jokes made about her on others's "walls"

I have decided when my DD is of the age that all her friends have it (probably about 8 the way this world is going!) she will be allowed one but I will have the password and there will be rules which she will sign and these will include:

no swearing
no suggestive photos
no airing of dirty laundry on statuses
must consult with me over every friend "add"

Can't really see what can go wrong if those rules are followed.

so when googling a person and facebook stuff comes up, if youve got an account i take it you can access some if not all of the info is that not the same for msn (confused)

It depends on your settings. Ask someone who knows a lot about it to set your DD's so that all people can se is the profile picture and an "add friend" button.
And make sure the profile photo is acceptable.

If you set the FB security settings correctly then no one can access it without permission

Yes

I set one up for my DS when he was 11yrs and leaving Junior school so he could keep in touch with his friends who went to different Senior schools.

The only adult he's allowed on his list is me, and he has to check with me before accepting any friend requests.

I've made sure his settings are as tight as a drum, and he doesn't even have a profile pic of himself...he has a WWE wrestler.

He hardly bothers logging in to it really but then he's not really one for spending much time at the computer.

soup dont agree children often forget things, in the heat or just choose to ingnore they wont take on bord that convrstions of them telling some girl in form f to fuck may be seen as bulling or cath up with them when trying to get a job, they dont nessariley know that the very fact that mr gorden the new student teacher adding them as a friend is wriong on so many levels

i dare say katie pipers mu talked to her about internet saftey she sti;ll added and meet a man off face book whom she had never meet

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/6449556/Tributes-paid-to-teenager-Ashleigh-Hall-who-died-after-Facebook-date.html

www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/teenager-found-dead-after-meeting-new-facebook-friend-20100516-v5qj.html

www.wpxi.com/news/28937121/detail.html

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1349352/Facebook-children-asked-fake-modelling-agencies-pose-underwear.html

the worse thing is i could just go on and on you can talk to your child but my view is their is more potential from harm than for good when children are involved

my mates daughter had Internet safety spoken about in school by the police the day before she added a man claiming to be a school friend who was in fact a man in his 40s he saw the picture of her uniform saw her age worked out what year she was in, what school she went to, what house she was in from the badges on her blazer and was due to meet this boy man after school the next week were in fact she would of been meeting a man and god knows what would of happened

i kept in conatct with primay school friends just find before facebok was invented i sure children under 13 can manage to

soup dont agree children often forget things, in the heat or just choose to ingnore they wont take on bord that convrstions of them telling some girl in form f to fuck may be seen as bulling or cath up with them when trying to get a job, they dont nessariley know that the very fact that mr gorden the new student teacher adding them as a friend is wriong on so many levels

i dare say katie pipers mu talked to her about internet saftey she sti;ll added and meet a man off face book whom she had never meet

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/6449556/Tributes-paid-to-teenager-Ashleigh-Hall-who-died-after-Facebook-date.html

www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/teenager-found-dead-after-meeting-new-facebook-friend-20100516-v5qj.html

www.wpxi.com/news/28937121/detail.html

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1349352/Facebook-children-asked-fake-modelling-agencies-pose-underwear.html

the worse thing is i could just go on and on you can talk to your child but my view is their is more potential from harm than for good when children are involved

my mates daughter had Internet safety spoken about in school by the police the day before she added a man claiming to be a school friend who was in fact a man in his 40s he saw the picture of her uniform saw her age worked out what year she was in, what school she went to, what house she was in from the badges on her blazer and was due to meet this boy man after school the next week were in fact she would of been meeting a man and god knows what would of happened

i kept in conatct with primay school friends just find before facebok was invented i sure children under 13 can manage to

Katie Piper was an adult. I really do not see how it can be in any way comparable to a 12yo having a facebook account.

The person who arranged for her to be attacked was her ex-boyfriend, who could just as easily have been anyone she met in a pub or a nightclub.

So, given Katie Piper you think the age limit should be raised to what, 30?

Katie Piper would have been 21 when Facebook was started so I doubt her mother did have a chat about internet safety.

I think any parent is being naive if they think that by banning facebook they will stop their child being on it. Unless their child is with them 24/7, they have access to facebook from friends houses, mobile phones, and many other sources.

If you ban your child, you run the risk of them doing it behind your back, and being too scared to turn to you if they do get out of their depths, because they fear being in trouble.

There are times in life when you have to accept that we have moved on technology wise, and facebook is not going to go away.

Parents can not have it all ways. You dont want your children hanging around on street corners, yet you dont want them socialising via the internet either. At least on the internet you can keep a much closer eye on what they are doing!

Our boys all have one, my youngest was only 12 when he set his up a few years ago. I still know his password, I have his privacy settings on the tightest available (as is mine) and I've checked it with friends on a few occasions to make sure that he's not showing anything about himself to anyone that isn't a friend.

It's all very well being a "friend", but how do you see what they are instant messaging each other - the teens I know with FB don't tend to put much on their walls, so stuff can go on undetected.

No one in our family has an account, no one wants one. Dd is 13, ds11, others are too young. Dh and I are happy with email, text, phones, letters and seeing people face to face.

If ds 11 or dd13 wanted an account, I'd help them sort it out and keep an eye.

Maypole - all those stories relate to girls well over the age of 13, so the age limit thing isn't relevant. And there are plenty of ways to contact strangers over the internet apart from on facebook - internet dating, twitter, special interest forums (MN meetups, for example?).

Which is why you have to drum it into your children again and again that people they have never met personally may not be who they seem, and they should never arrange to meet anyone unless it is in public, with friends, and with all the usual safeguards like mobile phones and letting other people know where they are etc etc.

At any age, it is perfectly possible to set up facebook so that no-one you don't actually know can find you/see your pictures/read your info etc.

bigtillymint you make sure you have the password!