Meet the Other Phone. A phone that grows with your child.

Meet the Other Phone.
A phone that grows with your child.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To ask you to be honest about your children and Facebook?

81 replies

ClawHandsIfYouBelieveInFreaks · 02/11/2014 22:34

I've seen my 11 year old niece on Facebook for about a year now Hmm she's never been active really...just liked her Mum's posts etc.

Lately though I've noticed a lot of activity because it seems her friends (all in year 6) are on it and they arrange to meet up and also post loads of silly pics of themselves up there.

Is this usual?

My DD is in year 6 but at a different school...she's so much younger than my niece and her friends. She'd never want to share photos in the same way...too shy I think. She has a small group of friends and they all skype one another. Or text.

Am I being naive in thinking that year 6 is too young for facebook? I've already seen a bit of low level bullying and exclusion on my neices posts. They're so naive they don't even think about who can see what they put!

Are your year 6 DC on FB??

OP posts:
Hulababy · 04/11/2014 12:45

Those who ban FB and Instagram due to the age limit - do you also ban Minecraft?

Minecraft has the same legal age limit - 13y.

Vitalstatistix · 04/11/2014 12:52

I thought kids hated fb nowadays. Because all us parents are faffing about on it Grin

aren't the kids all into something called instagram? My eldest is always on about it.

Notbythehaironmychinnychinchin · 04/11/2014 13:04

DS in yr 6 has skype. Doesn't have twitter, FB, snapchat etc. Did have instagram* briefly and followed 2 school friends but disabled it.

He has Whatsapp to send photos.
He has Minecraft too - had no idea there was an ege restriction Hulababy

*DS didn't have any issues with instagram but apparently some children in school had got in to trouble for bullying so he thought it was better to disable his account in case he got lumped in with it - I actually thought that was pretty mature of him.

Muskey · 04/11/2014 13:14

Dd 11 has recently asked for an Instagram account as "everybody else has one" I said no mostly because I didn't know what it was (pathetic I know). Really glad I did and will be waiting until she is 13 perhaps longer if I can get away with it

HelpMeGetOutOfHere · 04/11/2014 13:26

ds1 had facebook from about 13, he wasn't interested before, hes 17 now and never uses it and defriended me at 16! I know he only really uses whatsapp and instagram though.

ds2 is almost 13 and had facebook near the and of yr6, he was the only child from his primary to go to grammar school, so its a way of him keeping in touch with old friends. who he still sees outside of school now. He rarely uses it, I know his log in and hes on my friends list. He uses instagram a lot and so do most of his friends. He doesn't have a smart phone just a basic nokia so only uses the ipad/laptop at home.

dd is 8 and yr 4 she doesn't have facebook and hasn't asked, but she does have instagram. Controlled by me, set to private, I approve/block any followers and she uses it to look at monster high, zelfs, my little pony and zoella a youtuber who reviews lush products.

ThatDamnedBitch · 04/11/2014 14:15

My 11 year old isn't on FB and shows no interest in it at all. But she has ASD and is quite socially different to her peers. I suspect by the time her little sister is that age she will demand to have FB. Hmm I'm not sure how I will react TBH. I want to say it will be a firm no, but I don't know how I'll feel in a few years time and my youngest can ber VERY persuasive.

When DSD was 11 she had pretty much free reign on the internet. But this was 11 years ago before FB and Twitter etc, she mostly used MSN. I also wasn't as "internet savvy" back then.

Sallyingforth · 04/11/2014 15:27

For a child to sign up to FB or similar sites they have to lie about their age.
Is it really OK for parents to facilitate this and say that it's OK to lie about their age to do things that are age related? What about alcohol, tobacco, porn?

ravenAK · 04/11/2014 16:52

FIRST thing I taught my dc about the Internet was always to lie about birthdates etc.

In fact, I'm not really named after a carrion bird, either. Grin.

Hulababy · 04/11/2014 18:13

Minecraft (Mojang) terms of use: account.mojang.com/terms#website

"These Account Terms cover the ways our websites mojang.com and minecraft.net (our “Website”) will be provided to you and may be used by you. "

"If you are under 13 years of age, you should not use our Website."

Sallyingforth · 04/11/2014 19:42

FIRST thing I taught my dc about the Internet was always to lie about birthdates etc.

Good for you, ravenAK. Personally identifiable information should never be posted online.
But we are talking about age, not birthdates. Do you not understand the difference?

psychomum5 · 04/11/2014 21:40

I let mine get FB as they went into yr7 as a way to keep in touch with their friends they left behind, as they all went to different schools......altho the proviso was that I was able to go on whenever I pleased to check that they were only adding people they knew in RL.....indeed I still have their FB passwords but only go on the older teens with their permission.

skylark2 · 04/11/2014 22:00

DD never showed any interest in Minecraft, but yes I would have said she had to wait to 13. I really don't see how you can simultaneously expect kids to appreciate "it's fine to lie about your age to use Facebook / Minecraft / Instagram" and "you should never go on any site which says it's for adults only."

At 16 she had the public side of her account (which wasn't much at all) cloned by someone else pretending to be her who then tried to friend all her real schoolfriends and said some pretty vile things to some of them. She was shocked and tearful, and, thank goodness, came to me and said "help, what do I do?" and we figured out how best to report it and get it shut down. It still took a week.

I can't imagine a nine or ten year old having to cope with discovering that had happened to them - 16 was bad enough. It was nasty and really upset her.

skylark2 · 04/11/2014 22:02

Just to add - she's now 18 and away at uni, and half the time we find out what she's up to by looking at her facebook page!

CremeEggThief · 04/11/2014 22:25

My DS has been on Facebook since he was 9, but only friends with a few classmates and family members who live in different parts of the country and abroad, until he started Year 7.

badasahatter · 04/11/2014 22:32

DD is nearly 14 and doesn't want anything to do with social media. She has friends on snapchat and instagram who've begged her to join, but she hates it. She says 'why take pictures of yourself and things all the time and ask people to like you or them? I don't need random people to 'like' me or the things I like'. I'm not saying she avoids the internet...she's a massive youtube fan, listening to music all the time. Other than that, social media isn't a 'thing' in our house.

Shlep · 04/11/2014 22:37

DSD is on Twitter in Yr6. Not FB, she doesn't want to be and none of her friends of. She's also on Instagram. Her mum and DP monitor both accounts but it seems fairly harmless and Instagram has really got her into photography and made her want to go to loads of random places all over the world, because of the photos.

ravenAK · 05/11/2014 19:37

Yes, I think I've grasped that one, Sallyingforth. One is supplying false information to an organisation which doesn't necessarily have your best interests at heart, but which you want to use anyway, &, er...so's the other one.

Have you assimilated the explanation re: why FB requires a declared DOB which claims the account user to be over 13?

My dc lost interest in FB some time ago, tbh, although I daresay ds will add some of his mates who aren't headed for the same secondary as him, when he finishes Y6.

I don't know any 11yos who are so lacking in IT skills that they'd need their parents' help to set up their own online accounts, tbh - & I have 30 of them in my tutor group.

Sallyingforth · 05/11/2014 22:41

Have you assimilated the explanation re: why FB requires a declared DOB which claims the account user to be over 13?

Yes I know exactly why FB has a 13 limit. That has nothing whatever to do with my point. Which is that you are teaching the child that it's OK to tell lies in order to get what they want. Do you really think that's acceptable?

lecherrs · 06/11/2014 02:48

"Yes I know exactly why FB has a 13 limit. That has nothing whatever to do with my point. Which is that you are teaching the child that it's OK to tell lies in order to get what they want. Do you really think that's acceptable?"

Yes, I don't really care tbh. Have you never recorded a programme off the tv and kept it indefinitely (or at least kept it after having watched it), copied a friend's cd, reused a stamp or parked your car partly on the pavement? All of these acts are illegal and if you do it, you've broken the law. And if you've ever done that with your child - then by your reasoning, you have encouraged your child to break the law too.

The average Briton breaks the law on average seven times a week. We break the rules and laws all the time. No-one follows the rules all the time, and tbh I think it is naive to teach our children to just follow the rules. I don't even think it is healthy to do this. I don't think blindly following the rules is necessarily the best way forward - and indeed, it certainly wasn't a defence at the Nuremberg trials! Okay, an extreme example but we all know jobsworths who follow the rules to the letter, but are basically idiots.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/3044794/How-we-all-break-the-law-every-day.html

And as for lying, well given that the average person lies on average 3 - 6 times a day, I again think it is naive to think that we do not lie or that our children do not lie. Sometimes I even encourage my children to lie (say thank you for the present you hated and say something nice about it, don't tell the child in your class that you hate them when asked even if it is true, don't tell the child that wasn't invited to the party that she was the only girl not invited when asked and so on...).

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1213171/Men-lie-times-day-twice-women-study-finds.html

I'd rather teach my child to take responsibility for the choices she makes, and to think about why she chooses to follow or break the rules. I'd prefer to teach her the difference between mala in se and mala prohibita crimes, to think about the consequence of her actions and to take responsibility for them. But then, I am an existentialist and I think there are far more important things in life than blindly following the rules. Blindly following the rules does not make you a good person, taking responsibility for your actions and being the best person you can be is far more important in my view.

So to answer your question, It doesn't bother me that a child lies per se, I'd rather she thought about why she is telling a lie and takes ownership of the actions she takes, within an existentialist framework. I'd much rather my daughter was able to maturely make responsible and sensible decisions rather than naively following the rules without moral thought or question.

But each to their own I guess.

claraschu · 06/11/2014 03:31

My daughter joined facebook when she was about 11. It was completely innocuous, and she only used it occasionally. Her brothers were slightly older, but I have only found Facebook harmful as it is so easy to waste lots of time on it, and that doesn't seem to start until they are about 14.

TheWholeOfTheSpook · 06/11/2014 03:49

If there is one line guaranteed to incense me, it's "you can't police your teens Internet use". Yes, you bloody well can. You're paying for it and you're, ultimately, responsible if anything goes wrong. It's not only your prerogative, but your obligation to police your teen's Internet use.

ZingOfSeven · 06/11/2014 03:54

none of our kids are on Facebook and nor am I, bar 2 mock accounts for DS1 (13) and me solely for the purpose of friending each other so we could play together on Hay Day.

I don't see the need of it for me at all and the kids have never asked to join.

DH has a Facebook account, he needs it for work.

ZingOfSeven · 06/11/2014 04:06

lechers

don't forget speeding.
that's probably the top way we all break the law, willingly or even just by going 31 mph in 30 zone because we watch the road not the numbers.

However, it is ok to partially park on some pavements. in fact in some countries there's a road sign that requires you to do just that!

If you paid your tv license recording off the tv is not illegal! TIVO comes to mind - how could be anything illegal advertised on daytime telly?!
(did I miss the massive end of season cocaine sale on Balamory?!Grin )

Notbythehaironmychinnychinchin · 06/11/2014 07:46

I think there's something obscure that says you can record from your tv but should delete after watching.

I sold some CDs via music magpie as I had copied them all to mp3 format. Apparently once I no longer owned the CDs I was supposed to delete the mp3 versions. I didn't.

Notbythehaironmychinnychinchin · 06/11/2014 07:48

Something about it on here: www.iplayerconverter.co.uk/articles/recording-tv-radio-in-the-uk.aspx