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??

Not unreasonable Puzzled - but I'd make sure you make it clear that if your dc do get into an uncomfortable situation online, you'd rather know & won't be cross.

That's another one I deal with regularly as a teacher - 'you can't tell my mum X is bullying me online. She'll kill me if she finds out I'm on Whatever Platform!'.

& that's the ones who tell me, as their teacher. I would imagine a lot of kids who are bullied on media they've been forbidden to use don't tell anyone .

MrsBlimey the fantasies exist whether they have access to images or not. I have friends and family all over the world, we live abroad. I am not about to reduce my life because of the sick fantasies of pedophiles.

If a stranger has the ability to contact a child of 9 year without the parents knowledge then having a facebook account or not the biggest problem.

Reporting to facebook is underhand, report your concerns to the parent. If you feel you cannot approach the parent let the school do it.

teacherwith2kids you are using examples of children willing to share their number, do you know for a fact that their parents have taught them not to share personal information like names, numbers, address and location? What about the children that said no? Why did they say no, is it perhaps because they have been taught? Teachers and schools can say what they like, in my experience children learn most things from home.

It is possible to educate your children about internet safety and allow them to have accounts and use the internet. It's not rocket science.

If a stranger has the ability to contact a child of 9 years old without the parents knowledge then having a facebook account is not the biggest problem.

Dizzy, teaching a child something - whether at home or at school - does not always mean that they will do exactly what they have been taught if acting on the spur of the moment or in thoughtless silliness or in a 'group of their mates', whether that group is of real or virtual mates.

As a very simple example, think of the number of children who have been taught to cross the road safely, and will do so perfectly 99 times out of 100 - and then watch a gang of children together when the football that they have with them dribbles out onto the road...

Dizzy - if reporting to FB was underhand then surely it would not be encouraged.

I'm confused by your general position to be honest. I'm not saying internet should be banned for 9 yr olds - my kids if a similar age can't be ripped off their tablets at times BUT the difference is that they are using age appropriate apps. Nor am I suggesting that people (those over 13) shouldn't be in touch with others (over 13) around the world. However, given that FB and the school both acted promptly, that would tend to indicate that my concern was properly placed.

Btw I taught in my time ICT, coding, programming etc AND e-safety sessions to both primary and secondary ages over the years, so I do know the benefits of the Internet. The proviso though is always that as long as it's used safely, it's generally a very wonderful place.

I let my then 10 year old have a fb account mainly because of gaming links. His school were very strict on Internet safety and they were told they should not be in social before 13. I thought "what's the worst that can happen? " since I was keeping an eye on it etc.
Well he obviously didn't listen to any of his Internet safety stuff. We ended up in a horrendous situation where absolutely vile racist and sexually offensive stuff was being sent from his account to a girl he was fb friends with and posted on her fb wall. The girls parents called the police unsurprisingly.
The only good thing was that son was away on a school trip with no phone or Internet access do he was quickly exonerated. I was in the headmistress office with his tablet when we could see someone was continuing to access his account and post from a blackberry (which we didn't have).
It turned out my son had been incredibly careless and had left himself logged into his account all over the place including at the Apple store in town and on the phone (a blackberry) of an older boy he'd net at holiday club. It was this boy doing it. When the police caught up with him he was still lived in and admitted he'd done it because he thought it would be funny to get my son in trouble. This lad was also black which made me doubly shocked at the highly racist (ie n - word etc) language used.

One of the worst weeks of my life.

So yes I would report.

Me too dizzytomato.

My current cover photo is of my children at our local golf club, in their distinctive international school uniform. They are pretty identifiable.

But then IRL they were in a public place, in the aforesaid distinctive uniform accompanied by their teacher (which makes you a public figure locally) mum, & surrounded by classmates of a different ethnicity - they're not exactly inconspicuous at the best of times.

I'm not about to worry unduly who sees their photo.

(& completely agree with teacher re unrelated children being overshared - dd2's bff is in one of my photos from last night.
Obviously I checked with her mum - whom I was having a drink with at the time, she's a colleague - that she was happy for photo to be posted! )

"If a stranger has the ability to contact a child of 9 year without the parents knowledge then having a facebook account or not the biggest problem."

That is part of the issue, of course. A single risk on its own is tiny. It is when you get several risks together that they are compounded - a child who is silly in their use of the internet may also be silly in terms of their judgement of other risks. A child who has lots of unsupervised time to set up Facebook accounts unknown to parents may also be a child who spends some time in the house unsupervised and may answer the telephone - etc.

Sadly it's not unusual.

Folk create accounts for new babies and bloody dogs. Grim

teaching a child something - whether at home or at school - does not always mean that they will do exactly what they have been taught

This is true of anything. There are some things like your example of crossing the road the road that are statistically much more risky than being groomed online and yet parents probably spend much more time worrying about the latter.

If you saw a child crossing the road and risking their lives who would you tell? If you know the parents then you can talk to the parents yourself. If you know the school talk to the school. If you know neither of these then you would go to another source like a policeman or school crossing person (although they could do little unless they were close by). In the case of facebook you have jumped the first two ports of call (parents who you know and school which you also know) and gone to the third. This is what I mean by being underhand.

honeylulu I'm sorry for your experience but the "all over the place" is exactly why parents cannot prevent their children from accessing social media, they can have access to the internet every where and do it themselves. What would have happened if he had opened a facebook acount without you knowing about it? He may not have told you about it because it was forbidden. You wouldn't have been able to go into the headmistresses office with his tablet because you would have no knowledge of his account or access to it on the tablet. Also if you were monitoring his activity why did you not see the posts? Why was it bought to your attention by someone else?

Dizzy - read the full thread please. You'll see that I have told FB and I have told the school. So suggestions of being "underhand" puzzle me. In fact, judging by the majority of responses on here, I've done the correct and proper thing. I've also done the right and lawful thing professionally.

I'm not sure that a flim-flam approach to child protection which you appear to support in your posts, despite having real experience of the problems that it can cause, can be helpful to anyone.

Dizzy, as i am not the OP, I am not quite sure of the point that you are trying to make.

Originally, you suggested that teaching internet safety at school was ineffective, and the only reason that children might - for a short moment of excitement - been willing to share their mobile number online was because that message had not been taught at home. Your implication was that if the child HAD been taught that at home, they would NEVER have been willing to share, and therefore it was fine for them to have social media accounts as long as these lessons had been taught at home.

To which my response was that wherever, and however often, someone is taught something, there are circumstances in which they might still behave stupidly. I intended to imply that having rules in place that stop children being put in the position where they may behave stupidly - for example by having social media accounts before they are old or mature enough to appreciate the risks involved - is sensible.

To which you reply that this is true of anything, and then go on to make a point about the OP reporting to FB only - which was untrue.

You write a great deal of sense, Teacher - and yes, I completely agree that I'd rather know about any difficulties my dc had got into; being cross isn't the answer but proper vigilance is

As you suggest, the fact that - no matter how well thing are explained - children still do silly things is an excellent reason in itself for the age limits

So there are 21000 schools in England alone.Say each puts on 5 parent-invited events a year. Over 10 years that would be a million performances.I wonder how many children in England over the last ten years have come to grief over their image in a school performance/sports day etc being shared on FB?

Cate,

Every school I have worked in either asks parents not to take photographs at all, allows photographs only when children who we know are vulnerable have been removed quietly from the stage (i have never worked in a school where there are no children to be removed, so it does affect pretty much every school at some level), or requests that privately-taken pictures are not shared on social media.

I have, as i said, only been involved in one incident where parents broke these rules and posted an identifiable photograph of a child at high risk - but that means that the child took part in, say, 34 events over 7 years where parents obeyed rules and thus there was no risk.

So what I am saying is that your numbers are wrong, because in the main, staff are extremely vigilant and most parents are sensible and obey the rules / guidelines.

Originally, you suggested that teaching internet safety at school was ineffective

you're twisting my words I said, it is less effective than what they learn at home.

Your implication was that if the child HAD been taught that at home, they would NEVER have been willing to share

No you implied that the children who would be willing to share mobile numbers HAD been taught the dangers of this at school and home. But what about the ones who were not willing to share? Unless you know with 100% certainty that all the children willing to share were taught at home by their parents in the same way that people on this thread say they do it, then you cannot make the assumption that children will ignore their parents or forget stories they've heard in times of excitement.

MrsBlimey My son is 13, 13 is not some magic age where they suddenly become wise and don't do silly things! He is no different now than he was at 10. He would not do anything then that he wouldn't do now. All children are different and I think parental discretion is allowed.

I think, if you have concerns you could have raised them with the mother. For example "Your daughters facebook profile came up on my suggested friends list, did you know facebook has ways for you to make her invisible so she won't get any dodgy friendship requests?". I doubt you could be flogged or attacked for that!

I have read the thread, you didn't tell the parents because of past problems where you have clearly crossed paths/wires/or lifestyles. So I went to FB to report the profile and then said you would call the head. This should have been the first thing you did not the second. Reporting to facebook will just, as it did, lead the child/parent to open a new account, not solve the problem. Unfortunatly it's unlikely that the school will do anything but make the mum hostile.

I still think it was personal despite your protestations OP and I think you're being very disingenuous.

I wonder if anyone else thinks the whole thing gets muddied by teenagers' (apparent) extreme skill with IT? When they appear to know so much more about it than their parents, isn't it easy to believe they're safer than they actually are?

It wouldn't be the first time I've seen an oh-so-confident child insist snappishly that they know exactly what they're doing, only to turn into a snivelling wreck when something goes wrong

Dizzy - you know what? At least I did something, whether you personally think it was the right thing or not.

If the child has opened the account with the parents' blessing , then you or the school have no right to interfere.
In any case If fb tske it down, they will just open another one

For those who let their kids have FB accounts at a young age, does it bother you that you are condoning your child lying about his/her age online? Because FB doesask if you are 13 and won't set up the account unless you click yes. To me that just sends all kinds of confusing messages to a pre-teen kid who is trying to navigate the confusing world of social media and adult relationships. It also goes against everything I drill into my kids about lying. How do you get around that, or do you just have different priorities than I do?

My concern is that a 9 yr old child has a FB account which shouldn't be available to them until they are 13.

Also note that content made available to a 19-y-o on FB (including adverts) is quite different to that made available to a 13-y-o anyway.

I'm surprised FB acted. They used to be much, much tighter on underage users - to the extent that the first menu once you clicked on Report had that as an option. More recently they've ignored when I've reported underage accounts.

Are you sure the child herself is running the account? It could be the parents doing so like some people have pages for their toddlers or dogs.

As far as FB is concerned, it's a violation of its terms to both lie about your age and also to open an account on behalf of someone else.

BeaArthursUnderpants my kids didn't lie about their ages. My 13 year old has his age correct. I set up my 10 year olds account, it lists her as being my age with my birthday so not lying, she just thinks children need their parents information. Perfectly logical.

Also note that content made available to a 19-y-o on FB (including adverts) is quite different to that made available to a 13-y-o anyway.

No it isn't! Nothing is filtered in my 13 year olds account. I still have to monitor it in the same way as I do for my 10 year old. Facebook don't give a shit if they are 13 or 19. Once they are 13 they are suddenly ok but at 9-12 they are not . Films and games are rated, it doesn't mean that parents can just switch off and let them get on with it. Parents get to make the final call because it is their child.