to think it's ridiculous that children have Facebook accounts

[WhatNotHot]

Whats the point of having an age limit?
I noticed on my DB profile that a child he has connections with, had been asked the question 'would you have sex with ....? The child is 8 ffs

And before anyone comes on spouting about how their 5 yo DD needs a FB account because of them having family that don't live in the same room, then don't bother, people managed to keep in touch before social networking sites were introduced Surely there are sits more appropriate for children, like this one

YABU

My DD1 has one to play farmville on. For the reasons you state, she's not allowed to post status updates, or have anyone as a friend I haven't approved and I'm brutally honest with adults in our family who ask her to be their friend, saying I don't want them to feel inhibited in what they post, knowing that they'll forget they've got a 6yo as their friend. She's also not allowed to look at her friends' profile pages. She's perfectly safe. Far better that children are taught how to be safe on the internet, than that they are forbidden to do things and have to find them out by mistake and in secret.

Is the farmville(or similar)game not available on a more appropriate site then? Can she not just play it on yours?

Is the farmville(or similar)game not available on a more appropriate site then? Can she not just play it on yours?
Not having played the farmville game I'm not sure, but I thought it would be similar to a SIMs game, which surely can be gotten quite cheaply for a DS, PSP, gameboy-whatever kids have.

My cousins dog has a facebook account - now that is bloody stupid!!!

yabu both mine have fb accounts, mainly for the games. I police both very heavily and they both are aware of internet safety. I block unsuitable applications and they have to ask me to accept friend requests

would far rather they played farmville that sims tbh

lol my neice actually had her own facebook page aged 5 months and no im not joking!! Neice is now 14 months still has her own page!

she is so 'clever' as her nana says she can post on other peoples pages love you nana etc etc.

why on earth my sister thinks this is good i willl never ever know!

I would have to agree that Farmville is a silly reason for anyone under the age of 13, which is Facebook's minimum age, to have an account. Why can't she play on your account, or, as Whatnothot suggests, play a similar SIM game on the computer, but not online, or on a DS or the like? There are thousands, literally, of SIM games.

And yes, a dog with an account is certainly bloody stupid!

Oh and I have a FB account because my family lives very far away. Guess what? Anything they need to know about DS, I tell them. Of course, he's only 7 months...

There are so many games/consoles/forms of entertainment available nowadays, I can't believe that FB is the most appropriate source of them.

A dog having a FB account?! What's the point!

the idea of farmtown etc is to play against other friends online. more worrying is how addicted they become to them

my lot play happy aquarium and it seems to be taking over their lives with them saying to each other 'i'll send you this or that' or 'adopt my penguin'....they have to keep logging on to check! they are 15,13 and 11.

YANBU. DS1 turned 13 last week and that is when I allowed him to have an account. He survived perfectly well up until then. And OMG at some of his friends pages. No privacy settings with full name, HOME ADDRESS, msn address, mobile number, school and photos on!

His will be policed heavily, I have his password and he is on my friends. Not so I can snoop, but so I can make sure he is playing by the rules we have agreed.

Entirely agree - FB says it's for 13 year olds and over. There are other sites more suitable for children, and there are PLENTY of games available on other sites....

Though my 11 yo has a FB site.... which I have agreed she can keep as long as I am on her list of friends. The advantage of FB (and if I'm wrong please tell me - I don't use networking sites though I do have a FB account) is that I can see what she, and others, post, which is more than I can with bloody MSN.

YANBU. My friend's baby has had an account since it was a 12-week foetus

It's dangerous, IMO, for young kids to be 'networking'.

i had a big shock the other day with my 11 yr old ds.....i had set up xbox live,know little about it,but caught him chatting away through his headset to other grown MEN on his wrestling game!! (another failing as a lone parent)

have to work out now how to change settings,but it scared me big time!

Yanbu!

Why do some parents think its ok to let children have Fb when it is clearly for 13+??? Kids have their own things and sites and do not need to have Fb even for 'farmville'.

What next? Where do you draw the limit as to what adult thing is ok to give to kids despite clear guidance to the contrary.

I think some parents forget that you can say no to a child, they are children, you are the adult!

Kerrrrist on bike, can't five year olds be playing outsibe perchance instead of sitting in front of a computer? Face Book for children is just so sad. If you want your child to keep in touch with distant family, Skype them

Why not play farmville, though? What's wrong about it?

She can't use my account as I play it too. She has me, my cousin, my mum and one of our close friends as her FV neighbours. She's learning a lot from it and she enjoys it.

I hate censorship. It should be up to individual parents to make informed decisions for their individual children.

I think it is fine if they are supervised and really it is totally up to the parents of said child. My younger DB has a fb account just to play the games, they are different to the games on a ds and other consoles and i can see why a child would want their own farm, not their mum or dads.

I agree and thinks its absolutely ridiculous why any child under 18 should have a fb acc. my dds are 14 and 9 yo and no way will i allow it. i've only just aloud my eldest to have msn but i monitor it at all times. as you said people coped through the years with keeping in contact with their family that aren't close by surely they could do the same or even write letters. what has this world come to with regards to playing farmville oh well now let me see there just too many to count of the games that out there that can be played. heres a site that kids can safely join and play games. www.moshimonsters.com i would reccommend it. we need to make sure our children are safe and try keep them young as long as we possibly can.

Yes, but I don't play moshimonsters, and I do play farmville, and DD enjoyed watching me and wanted to play too. I still don't understand what harm it is doing to her? If someone can enlighten me, then maybe I'll rethink it, but at the moment, I can't see any reason whatsoever for her not to be allowed to play it.

Ds has one, been thinking of deleting it though. I set it up when he was a baby so I could police the privacy settings on photos of him. Dh and I were both undergraduates at the time and while I could of course have tagged him as me in pictures I had the usual huge amounts of random "friends" you get as an undergrad and so it made more sense to me to control who he was "friends" with and make sur his pictures could only be seen by them.

Now I've been graduated a while though I have been meaning to get rid of it and have a big friend cull on my own profile.

Some people keep asking me when my DS will be on facebook - he is 9 months - I keep ignoring them.

fv is fairly benign in my opinion.

I think some parent who are not completely internet savvy are not completely aware of the risk or don't respect the age ratings.

My sister let her kids watch 18 movies when they were in their early teens and I've know of people who let there kids play certain 18 rated games (Grand Theft Auto!). The excuse that usually comes is that if the parents didn't allow it, then they would just go and play around a friends house. Fair comment - it's easier to monitor in your own house.

I play a online game called SecondLife where a real person is represented by an avatar and you can communicate, fight, build objects, have sex, etc. I've met a succession of 9-14 year olds (and subsequently reported them) when the minimum age is 18.

Well done liamsdaddy for doing the right thing. Just wish there were more people out there with the same ideas.

YANBU, i have a DD who is 7 and i will NOT allow her to have a FB account and luckliy most of her friends dont either so its not like she is missing out.
You can police their accounts very heavily but you cannot be there every second and all it takes is for them to give information to the wrong person and they could be in serious danger, i think people need to remember that even though someone may be their friend they do not know them completely, look at that woman who worked in the nursery i bet her friends had no clue!!!

As far as i am concerned its better to be safe then sorry, there are hidden dangerous where you would never imagine them to be.

Yep, finding it odd that I keep getting requests from friends' kids who are under 10 or young teenagers. Just ignoring them - grumpy old woman...they are not my friends who I want to share my personal daily stuff with, they are my friends kids!

Liamsdaddy i love modern warfare 2, just saying