I know you hate facebook, but

[MichelleRooJnr]

I use it a lot.
My circle of friends are active fb-ers and we share a lot of photos etc on there.
I had a friend request from my 11yo niece!
It was quite a few weeks ago.

I ignored, but spoke to my sister tonight who told me DN is upset as I'm the only person who has not accepted her request.
I told my sister that there is no way I can vet my wall to make sure everything is appropriate for an 11yo.
She suggested I ought to put DN's feelings first and unfriend or block any potentially rude friends.

This is not a question of whether fb is shit or not or whether I am sad/pathetic/immature for using it.

It's about whether iabu to not accept my niece's request because I don't want to be responsible for exposing an 11yr old to the filthy humour of my friends.

(I'm not a parent so genuinely don't know - do 11yo often have fb a/cs?)

I know because I made my DS's account so I can log in whenever I like.

Mind you, he hasn't logged in since September....he's too busy chatting to his mates on XBox live!

YANBU!! I have got younger friends but the most obscene posts on my wall come from their mother, so I don't feel overly responsible.

I'd explain to her mum that I'd be happy to become friends with her once she's old enough that she doesn't have to lie about her age to set up an account.

Then set up a group called 'teenagers' to put her in. Then when you post a status update, instead of visible to 'friends' click on 'custom' and set it to 'friends' except 'teenagers'. Very little of what I post is visible to all of my friends.

Oh god I had this recently, 12yo cousin on my fb, my aunt decides a conversation I was having with several friends on my wall she didn't approve of and I got a shed load of arsy texts. (It was only about keeping the magic of christmas alive ffs, and she's adamant her savy 12yo still believes ha!) Anyway I didn't delete him as hed done nothing wrong and he doesn't actually know how to access my wall and in his words, "why would I it will be boring anyway" but I've refused all further cousins and will until they're 18.

YANBU. The only children I have as friends are my own. My wall is perfectly appropriate for them TBH, although rather dull, but I don't want to see their drivel :o This even applies to my own niece and nephew and they are actually adults now!

Both DSs got their FB accounts before 13 - monitored by me. I decided that it was far better they have an account I knew about than an unmonitored one they'd set up themselves.

yanbu. You are entitled to an adult sense of humour.
Talk to your niece directly to make it clear it's not about her but about your friends being making rude jokes. Done.

Can't believe an ADULT is making a fuss about this.

Am I the only one who thinks it isn't my job to worry about what a 12 year old reads on my wall if their parents allow them on FB? My 12 year old cousin's post make my eyes water as they are so inappropriate and her photos are something I wouldn't allow my 16 year old to post but I assume her mother and father can see them too so none of my business?
Much worse when you get requests from your 70 year old aunts :-/

Also I really don't think I'd let my under 13 on there. Even if you supervise them every second they are on there and monitor what they see, their profile and pic is up there for every Tom, dick and pervert too see, their friends can tag them in pics etc.

I don't accept anyone younger than my 14yr old dd .... Luckily she's about the oldest out of her friends so although her friends request me, once she tells them, they accept it.

She doesn't want to see your activity, she wants another friend to up her numbers.

But Yanbu about thinking 11yos shouldn't be on FB.

On the other hand, my FB is clean - the adult things are political and boring/incomprehensible to children rather than watershed stuff - and I keep it so by having DM and MIL as friends!

And if she is so young as to be upset about having FRs ignored or refused, to the extent of needing her mother to "have words", then she is definitely (perhaps definitively!) too young for a FB account.

yanbu I wouldn't want children on my facebook either I have friends who have their kids friends and get involved in petty arguements , there is 1 thing having your own children and monitoring them on facebook, another to get right in the middle of teen squabbles

DrRanj again the settings are so that the profile can only bee seen by friends, and they can have a profile pic of anything...it doesn't have to be of them.

I have rejected quite a few requests from DS's friends and from my nephew and told them why. DS doesn't have an account yet but when he does I may rethink my approach to it and just limit what people can see. There are certainly a couple of friends of mine who post jokes unsuitable for a child's eyes and I'm not above being a little crude myself, as I showed last night!