Do you let your preteen use Facebook? Are you a criminal?

[CHC74]

Internet safety consultant and author Charles Conway says that ignoring the website?s age limit could land both children and their parents in legal hot water

According to the latest research by EU Kids Online, 43% of 9-12 year olds in the UK are actively using Facebook, despite the site imposing an age limit of 13 and above.

Internet safety consultant and author Charles Conway says that ignoring the website?s age limit could land both children and their parents in legal hot water and expose them to penalties which could include up to two years imprisonment.

Why does Facebook have an age limit?

The Facebook age limit has nothing to do with UK law.

It?s a requirement of the US Child Online Privacy and Protection Act (COPPA), which forbids US based websites from collecting personally identifiable information from anyone under the age of 13 without parental consent.

Rather than try and gain that consent for every preteen that wants to join the website, Facebook decided instead to ban users under the age of 13 from the site altogether.

If it?s a US law, how could it land a UK child or parent in jail?

The COPPA legislation couldn?t. The burden of responsibility is on the website operator to ensure it complies with the law, not the user.

There is, however, existing UK legislation that Charles says could be used to make it a criminal offence for preteens to sign up for the site, and for parents to let them.

Section 1 of the Computer Misuse Act 1990 defines an offence of gaining ?Unauthorised access to computer material? and states that a person shall be guilty of an offence if:

a) he causes a computer to perform any function with intent to secure access to any program or data held in any computer, or to enable any such access to be secured ;
b) the access he intends to secure, or to enable to be secured, is unauthorised; and
c) he knows at the time when he causes the computer to perform the function that that is the case.

Offences under this legislation carry a maximum penalty on conviction of up to two years in prison, a fine, or both.

But doesn?t that law just apply to hackers? I still don?t understand how my 11 year old could end up with a criminal record for using Facebook

?The important thing to note is that Facebook doesn?t allow under 13s to join the site and its terms and conditions state clearly that anyone below that age should not use the site? says Conway.

?That means that anyone under the age of 13 signing up to the site is gaining ?unauthorised? access and could potentially be committing an offence under the legislation every time they log in.?

The legislation says that my child has to know that their access is unauthorised. Couldn?t they just say that they didn?t know they shouldn?t use it?

?When a user signs up to Facebook, they have to provide their date of birth, and agree to the terms and conditions of access to the site.? he goes on to explain

?If a date of birth is entered that reveals that the user is under 13, the site clearly displays a message that states ?sorry, we are not able to process your registration?. In order to successfully register an account, the child has to provide a false date of birth that puts them at 13 or over.

It would be difficult to argue that the child didn?t know that they shouldn?t use the site when they have had to lie about their age to gain access.?

How could parents be held accountable for their children breaking the law?

Charles suggests that if parents, foster carers or anyone else with responsibility for children allow those children to use Facebook, they could be equally guilty.

?This is where the secondary offence of ?enabling access to be secured? comes in. By allowing a child to use a computer to access Facebook with their knowledge and approval, or helping them to set up an account, it could be argued that those parents or carers are ?enabling? the child to gain unauthorised access to Facebook?s servers.? according to Charles.

?In theory (as a prosecution has never been brought in the UK courts), a defence of ?due diligence? on the part of the parent would be the best option. Showing that they have used a combination of parental supervision and web filtering software on all of the Internet enabled devices that their children have access to would demonstrate that they have taken all reasonable steps to prevent their child from signing up to Facebook in the first place.?

Should we be criminalising kids?

Charles is keen to point out that he wouldn?t want to see children being locked up for using Facebook.

?I don?t believe that children should be prosecuted for signing up for Facebook. However, if it were made clear that it was an offence to have an underage account (or to ?enable? the use of that account) it would drastically reduce the number of underage users on the site, which would improve the online safety of children everywhere and give parents the ammunition they need to withstand the pressure from kids who tell them ?but everyone else is using it.??

What do you think? Should the law be applied in this way to reduce the number of preteens on Facebook?

I have 2 dds, one is 14 the other is 12 and I have made both wait until their 13th birthday before allowing them to sign up for Facebook.

Neither of them like(d) it, but I felt that those were the rules, so we will abide by them.

Fed up with my 9th old bugging me for FB and violent 18 video games as many of his friends get them. It's happening and there's no turning back the tide. I'm just the big bad meanie cos I haven't given in (yet).

I have 3 ds's, one aged 14 had to wait til he turned 13 and a 10yo who will also be waiting - not because I am arsed about being a 'criminal'.

Although I have had friend requests from girls in ds2 class (Y5), their profiles are open and have links to themselves singing and dancing on you tube!! I am totally cats bum mouth at that - there seems to be more girls bothered about FB than boys in my (limited) experience.

DS1 head of year said the amount of trouble FB causes for her (at the time ) Y7 girls was unbelievable and hated it with a passion.

Dd1 (8) uses mine under supervision to keep in touch with her Aunt and play a few of the games. She is not allowed her own, no matter how much she begs.

I am evil. Apparently.

"I am evil. Apparently."

For allowing your child to use YOUR account under supervision? No. YOUR access is 'authorised' and therefore wouldn't be caught under the legislation (if it were to be applied to Facebook as the OP suggests)

You have decided that your child cannot have her own account. What you're doing is called responsible parenting.

Mine also had to / will have to wait until they are 13. That is the rule on the site. It's there for a pretty good reason.

I allowed my DS to join at 12 as his class at school has their own Group.

All his privacy settings are present and correct.

What did irk me was GoogleMail suddenly, retrospectively deciding that under 13s couldn't use their email accounts any more! Froze them! So DS1 could no longer join in any of the (age appropriate) on-line games where he'd 'signed on' using that GoogleMail account.

I mean, it's one thing to prevent DC accessing predetermined 'content' in a game but another to stop them using email. It's like taking a garden spade away from a someone in case they decide to dig up a high tension cable with it!

Needless to say, he won't be using GoogleMail again, he's a 'Sky' boy now!

My DD has FB and she is 12. I have her access though and monitor it regularly. I also set up my own FB account purely to see what others could see of hers iyswim.

I agree, it is the work of the devil but Blackberry Messenger is worse imo from a girly nastiness point of view.

My DCs can't read yet, so FB is not currently an issue. But I would pay only a little notice to the site's age limit when deciding whether to let them have an account. It might make me a criminal technically, but then so does letting my car go at 31 in a 30 zone, so I don't think of it as particularly damning out of context. If my DCs having an account would make the site criminally liable I would be unlikely to allow it though. I think putting others in a bad position for personal gain is unethical.

No, I don't allow my 11 year old to have a FB account - don't have one myself either .

It's really ridiculous to put time and effort into banning things. It would be wiser to educate children on how to use the internet safely. My ds had "hacked" the parental controls on the internet at his elementary school at age 8. I was quite happy that I had decided against parental controls in our household and instead spent a lot of time and effort educating my dc's on how to use the internet wisely and not to give out private information and when in doubt, ask me. At 9 and 11 they can spot an internet scam a mile away, know how to buy and sell things online and google the most complicated concepts. I suspect that they will not be texting nude pictures to people when they are teenagers as they understand clearly the public nature of technology. I really wish these concepts were taught better in school as well instead of just banning things until they are 13 and then hoping that they will be mature and wise (at 13???!!!!!!!) with no training at all.

yy Sofia

My child won't have face book he is 12 everyone he knows gose to he school which he see every day

The police has already been called in the school over facebook threats getting out of hand

SofiaAmes yeah let's not have any controls rolls eyes

We have key stroke tracer and swear word filter and a proxy wall look out also son has been warned by oh if parental controls are tampered with in any way thats it for Internet use at home until he leaves

We also have a time which times out after 1.5 hours and and thing that sends us a list of sites he has visited on his session

He just been given a email account with sends oh any blocks any mails with swear words or the banned words we added

Call me a criminal then. It is a wonderful way to keep in touch with all my family overseas.

Mrbo Sofia didn't say they have no controls. Have you never heard of self-control?

If you want people to follow a rule the most effective way is to make sure they buy into the rule's intent. Then, even if they break the actual rule (accidentally or intentionally) they'll still try to do what you're after anyway.

MrBo.

My only concern with your approach is the message you send to your son is "We don't trust you". Deadly for a teenager.

I'm an IT professional who specialises in networking and firewalls. I could easily lock my home network down tighter than a ducks arse. But I don't. And we also have no restrictions. My 15 yr old DD has her own password to Facebook which I don't know and open access to the Internet.

The worst thing you can do is to rely upon these technologies and lull yourself into a false sense of security. Sure lock your home network down. Will your son now tell you if he's found a hack/hole, surfing porn and facebook then gets himself into trouble? No he can't without making things worse with you.

What I've learned is that parenting a teenager is no longer about protecting them from the real world but actually letting them explore it, make mistakes, experience hurt and pain and crucially support them when they do. You cannot do this by wrapping them in electronic cotton wool.

Banning swear words is simply ridiculous. Do you honestly think he doesn't know them? Just what are you protecting him from? The only thing he needs to learn is that swearing is fine with your mates in small doses. But not anywhere else and especially not with parents/family. That's it!

MrBo, while you are busy rolling your eyes at me, your ds is probably disabling your keystroke tracer so that you can't tell, erasing his internet history so that you can't tell and swearing in person to his friends instead of by email. My ds is certainly able to do all of the above at age 11. How is your ds going to cope when he gets into the real world at age 16 or 18? How is he going to be able to understand how the public nature of technology works and impacts his life if you have not given him any chances to try and mess it up (in a small and harmless way with your protection).

By the way, Ds is not on the internet without any supervision. I get a copy of all his emails (thought at this point there are so many people clamoring to get on his minecraft server, that I may stop that), I know all his passwords and he is aware that I may do spot-checks on his Facebook account at any time. We had a long and collaborative discussion about what to reveal publicly on his Facebook profile....but really ds is so educated about what is wise and not wise to put out there that I have never found anything to complain about.

Neither of my children have Facebook accounts although many of their friends do. ds will be 13 in a couple of weeks, but has little interest - he tends to do his online socialising on the X-Box. dd is 11 and would love to, but has already had some online bullying issues (ironically on hotmail which we had to set up a new email account when Google mail blocked her out, with no warning and so she lost all her mails and contacts).

My dh is also a geek and has taken the same view as niceguy. Our main control is that we only have the computers and consoles in our family room.

I don't think criminalising is the way to go, nor do I think that there would be any prosecutions as it's not really going to be in the public interest, but I do think it would be a good idea for parents to be a little more careful. Having said that we allow ds to play games rated above his age (this is because we use the European ratings rather than the North American ones, as over here they are a bit OTT on sexual content, and a bit too relaxed on violence for my English sensibilities).

Mrbo - what you describe sounds awful - not trusting your child and giving the clear message he can't trust you either. You're not protecting him from anything with your approach, but make sure that you're the last person he'd come and talk to if he's got a problem.

OP, are you in fact, Charles Conway?

I don't like Facebook. I don't like what I see posted on it from other girls in DD's year at school (yr7). I do have a Facebook presence, but have never posted a status update on it. I keep in touch with my friends and family in other ways.

I allow DD (11) to use my account for games, but she has no interest in using it to "chat". To be honest, the girls in her class who already have a FB account are the "troublemakers" so I am not in any hurry for her to get signed up.

If you allow your DC on facebook, or any other age-restricted site, before they are old enough, you are teaching them it's OK to lie about your age. When they then try to buy alcohol or cigarettes or access porn or whatever before they are 18, you haven't really got a leg to stand on - you've taught them that age restrictions don't matter.

I think it's hard for kids. If every other kid in the class has Facebook, often on their smartphones, how do you feel if you are the only one who hasn't and whom assumes they are all talking about him or her on FB?

I think I'll supervise mine but they will be taking a crash course in 'bad things people do online' first.

Agree with Niceguy2

My 12 yr old DS did have a FB account which only I knew the password to he mainly played games on it and kept in touch with a couple of school friends who'd moved overseas, I deactivated it recently as he and I were getting fed up of the dreadful manipulative and frankly worrying messages he was being bombarded with from 11-12 yr old girls at school. Self esteem lessons definitely required for those girls and I bet their parents werent monitoring their FB use!

My 15 yr old has FB and a sensible attitude to using the internet and safety.

Id like to know how any of the laws in the OP would be enforced though.

I didn't know that about gmail. All four of mine have gmail accounts, the youngest are 7! They use it to email relatives.

dd has facebook, has done since she was 10 I think. It's all very innocent between her and her mates. Mostly sharing photos, chat and the odd meet up plans. I do sometimes wonder what all the fuss is about! I know her passwords, and read her facebook and emails. It doesn't bother her at all yet that I do have access. If I caught her behaving inappropriately I would stop it. I think she saves private stuff for texting, which I dont have access to unfortunately!