to report this to FB/primary school child protection officer

[MrsBlimey]

So I'm on FB and one of the suggested friends for me is an (only just) 9 yr old girl who is the same class as my kids at school. Was so surprised I clicked on it as I was shocked that a 9 yr old would have a profile and I wanted to make sure that there wasn't anything massively dodgy.

Turns out on the profile she says her date of birth is 10 yrs earlier than it really is (presumably so that she can create an account). Can't immediately see that there is anything massively dodgy (apart from that) on the profile but then again I'm not friends with her so there may be other bits restricted to just people she's friends with.

So, with my judgy pants well and truly up to my chest and almost keeping my neck warm, should I report this to FB?

Should this also (judgy pants working as a hat now) be reported to school, which is very hot at the moment on esafety issues with that class in particular?

Sadly I am reluctant to raise the issue with the child's mother personally as I (and many others) have been on the receiving end of unnecessary nastiness and unwarranted vitriol a bit like local vigilantism in the past, which lead to my own kids being bullied by her daughter and her friends in school.

Have no desire to seek revenge for the bullying by reporting the profile, btw, although I can see how that might be misinterpreted.

I am a teacher too (different school) and I have dealt with parents with similar concerns which were taken seriously by both FB and the school.

WWYD??

Skittles - my point exactly - it's not the feckless parenting allowing her to have it in the first place, it's the risk that she's exposed to god knows who else online. If she's coming up on my suggested feed them she's coming up on others' too.

Wonky - yes, as a teacher myself it has always been drilled into my professionally that you report any concerns (however little or inconsequential or judgy they may seem) and then it's up to the CP officer/head/whatever who has generally the bigger picture, to determine what to do, if anything. It's not Upton the reporter to censor/edit/withhold the information it Mage a judgement call on it. That is the crux of CP in schools and even though I don't teach in the same place, the same principles apply.

I do completely see the 'judgy pants' thing but the whole point is the safety of the child online. Not my opinion of the parent, which despite what I mentioned in earlier posts, I'm sure is now irrelevant.

It's not up to the reporter to censor/edit/withhold the information or make a judgement call on it.

Damn autocorrect.

Even if I wasn't a teacher, I'd rather know that I'd passed the information on and actually done something than just ignored it in case someone thought I should keep my nose out.

So I guess my OP title is now irrelevant but thank you all for helping me decide what to do.

Btw, FB has been back in touch and said they're 'reviewing' the profile.

I'm going to speak to the school this morning.

Well, if you report it & get it taken down, she'll just have to spend 5 minutes registering a new account under a less obvious name. Which will irritate her. You can't keep a technologically savvy kid off social media.

If there's something inappropriate on her profile, report to school as a safeguarding measure. If not, it's her & her parents' business.

Anything dodgy will be on her snapchat. Fb is for keeping in touch with your grandma.

Just read the first page and unless there has been something shocking revealed on page 2 you are being very precious. I'm really shocked that you are surprised that an underage child has a FB account. It is also not your job to "police" it to ensure there is nothing dodgy.

My dd10 has had an account for 2 years. She is autistic and uses it to chat with friends/family that she won't engage with face to face. I monitor everything that goes on there. I would be a bit peeved if a teacher approached me saying that a parent had complained/shared her concerns.

Disclaimer: I am very private on FB and don't share any pictures, nor do my children.

The problem with being "very private" on social media though is your 10/20/30 friends and family might save your image to share with their 10/20/30 friends and family. It's a known fact that the majority of sexual abuse occurs within families. Social media and the Internet have created the most extraordinary playground for these sickos. How can you/we know for sure where our photos are ending up? The short answer, as I've come to understand is, we can't.

I wouldn't report to FB,I'd go and have a word with the school.From what you've said it doesn't sound like the poor little girl might have the most stable of life's at home.

I understand why your worried I would be as well,FB and most other social networks are sadly used by alot of adults that would be unsafe for a young child to have any contact with.Online grooming as become one of the worst and fastest growing forms of grooming of children sadly.My DH is in the Police Force and I used to work with SS.

If the parents aren't likely to check on the little girls safety online it's really lovely that you've stepped into do it.Not enough people stick they're necks out for other people's children now days.

Good call OP

I hope the school step in and check the little girls okay.I used to teach before I started working with SS and the hardest part of the job was feeling that when some of the lovely children were picked up from school(children we knew weren't being treated properly,we always reported it) going home could be the worst thing possible for some of them.

I know of loads of children with fb accts, I don't agree with it but it's not unusual.

I'd report it to FB and also have a quiet word with the class teacher. Most of the stuff on FB is totally inappropriate for a 9yo to see. If the mother is a bully, leave her out of it.

I like your style! Hope your judgy pants enjoyed their airing

I'm going to have to be careful now in case I out myself locally but school IS interested and WILL deal with it in a positive reassuring manner today.

So once again just now her name popped up in my suggested people list, right at the top. I clicked it and it's a new profile for the same girl made ~in the last hour~. On this one the dob is not visible. So something tells me that FB did probably act by closing the original one but that in the time before school started this morning, a new one was set up for her.

So there you go.

Wave your judgy pants banners at me if you will. At the end of the day it's whether the kid is safe online. There are reasons for age limits on things; goes for computer games and films and stuff too.

No judgy pants here MrsBlimey . The things I've learnt in the last few years are just horrifying and the fact that so many people are so blasé about protecting their children online makes me feel sick to the stomach. You've done the right thing

My 10 year old has facebook, a lot of the children in her school do, 10 of her 15 class mates have it and they use it to share homework information and funny posts. She has friends (at her school in the years above and even below) and family. She is very aware of internet safety and will not add suggested friends unless she asks us first. She uses a shared tablet/laptop and will not have her own device until she is older.
If someone reported her I'd be very pissed off and she would be very upset.

At school (primary age), we tread a fine line when talking about social media and age restrictions.

In general, we talk about keeping yourself safe online, and that the rules that we have for internet use in school might be ones that they should at least think about applying when they are using the internet at home / on phones and tablets - privacy settings, reporting to an adult, not giving out contact information, etc.

We talk about how behaviour online should be similar to behaviour offline - kind, fair, appropriate - and crack down on any incidents of online bullying exactly as we would with physical bullying (although both may happen 'outside the school gates', we treat both as 'our business' because they affect the children concerned in school as well).

We have outside speakers - police etc - coming in once a year at least to talk to everyone about online risks, and have it as an assembly topic regularly.

If incidents - unpleasant comments on games that allow chat, Instagram shenanigans etc - happen, and are reported to us in school, we talk to those involved and their parents, and share appropriate warnings or guidelines with all children and parents. Anything serious gets reported up through the CP designated person chain.

We publicise the age restrictions on all common social media sites with all children and all parents, so no-one can say 'we didn't know'.

But we cannot control what parents allow their children to do at home and on their own devices. What we tend to say is 'if you have a social media account that your parent / the adult you live with knows about and knows what you do on there, then that is one thing, whereas having a social media account that hasn't been approved by and isn't in any way monitored by a responsible adult is another.'

It is, in practice, very hard, and what we try to do is equip the children and their parents (indirectly & via the information we send home) with the knowledge and skills to keep safe online, rather than 'laying down the law'.

My dc have FB & I'm not at all blase about it.

I'm not naive enough to believe that intelligent dc who are required to have & use sophisticated devices online all day at school won't be able to set up an account I don't know about, any time they wish to.

My strategy is to teach them about online safety & to use social media under supervision before they take control of it themselves.

I just asked ds (11) to list all the social media accounts he has. It took a couple of minutes & there were one or two I hadn't heard of. I'm a teacher & regularly attend safeguarding training on this stuff, so not a total luddite.

Ds says he only regularly uses a few of them - instagram, YouTube & Facebook. Apparently the most inappropriate things he's been exposed to have been on YouTube - 'swearing & bad 80s horror films mum. I'm basically replaying YOUR teens'

Online safety is a massive issue, but I don't believe that trying to keep 9yos from using Facebook is the answer. Teach them to be safe online instead.

Photos are pixalated images, not real children. I really couldn't care less if some sicko is wanking over pictures of me or my kids at the beach. I am more concerned about the real children they have access to.

I was sexually abused as a child, I wish it had only been my photograph he'd had access to. That way I could have avoided the the harm. I educate my children in ways my mother failed. Real danger comes from those we know on and off social media.

I agree with CrowyMcCrowFace get in there first and teach then yourself before someone else does.

The older they get the more time they spend with other children. They have access to the the internet in places you might not even know about.

My DD (11) has a FB account which I check frequently. There's nothing on there which puts her at any greater risk than anything else in life. You can change the settings so you can't receive friend requests or get messages from strangers.

It is possible to supervise one's child y'know.

Following an incident involving a picture of a child in my class shared without consent, I once demonstrated how quickly I could get from a picture of them in a school uniform jumper to full name, address and telephone number.

[School name from uniform jumper gave me place name; using place name + context of photo gave me place name sports team, matching photo gave me first name; sports team + first name + approximate age gave me a match report with full name; full name + place name gave me likely address; quick BT search gave me phone number].

I could then have made a phone call to the child saying 'Hey, X, I know that you play for Y sports team / live at Z / go to A school' - and for many children, that apparent detailed knowledge of them would be sufficient to establish the caller as 'known'.

(Sorry, that was in reply to the 'photos are only pixilated images' comment. I agree that I have no specific problem with someone having a picture of my child per se. I have more of a problem with an identified and identifiable picture that can place my child and allow them to be contacted at an age when they might not be sophisticated enough to understand how this could come about 'wrongly' and deal with the consequences)

Just so we're all clear, I am fully aware of how parents can sensibly monitor and control what their kids see and do online. Mine have tablets and they have all sorts of special settings, time limits, app specific time limits, they have a v good understanding of what they can and can't do and why, they show me anything they're not sure about but most importantly they don't have apps or social media for which they are too young.

Basically they play Minecraft and Crossy Road against each other and use Scratch. That's about it and that's their choice. I also get any notifications, password protect the App Store etc and encourage them to be open about what they do and when etc. The app Qustodio is also very good to track your kids' activity on a phone or tablet.

The issue is that there are age limits on many apps etc for very good reasons. My concern is that a 9 yr old child has a FB account which shouldn't be available to them until they are 13. That's 4 whole big years of growing up to do before FB itself considers it suitable for that person to use their product. It's about exposing yourself to the wider world and not knowing what privacy settings your friends' friends' etc have.

Dizzy - I'm very sorry to hear about your troubles in childhood, really I am. Sadly now lots of perpetrators do begin/feed their fantasies with greater and wider access to images online, whether they know the kids or not. So any step which can help limit or restrict the images or contact available in the first place should surely help?

I'd report it to FB because she has lied on her application. Simple as that. Sick of people saying it's not your business, walk on the other side of the road. As a society we need to care for others, and this child is now open to all kinds of risks.

FB has age limits for a reason.

And as a teacher you should know sentences don't start with 'so' my pet hate

Haha! Good call, Booming!

As I understand it, the age 13 thing was not set by Facebook etc 'for children's safety', it was set to comply with (US federal) legislation - the 1998 Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). If data was being collected from children under 13, then the site would have had to comply with this law, so it decided to go with 13+ to avoid the requirement.

Interesting - wasn't aware of that. Surely though if FB did want to make it available to under 13s then it could quite easily sort out the way to do it, even if it meant different data collection methods. FB being all seeing, all doing etc. The fact that it's not chosen to do that therefore does strike me as significant.