What are people's thoughts about under-age use of Facebook?

[mutha2two]

I have just received an email from 10 yo DS1's classmate (a very good friend of his) asking him to be a friend on Facebook. From what I can gather the minimum age to join is 13. For the moment I have not mentioned to DS1 that this email has come in. I have been slightly dreading the Facebook issue as I am going to have to do some fasttrack self-educating in terms of setting up the account with the right privacy settings, joining it myself etc. etc (not something I have a great deal of interest in I have to say - call me old fashioned but I like texting and emailing) Of course I want to make sure he's using it safely, but frankly I thought that was a couple of years away! Any suggestions as to how to I should tackle this? Anyone else been confronted with this dilemma?

curlywurlycremeegg ,Good luck with him not setting up a secret fb account

I allowed DS2 to join in Yr7, so 11. I did it because I felt he needed all the help he could get re fitting in at that stage - and it's always been on the basis that DH and I have to be his FB friends. It's been fine.

I've had a few FB requests from either his "friends" or the children of my friends. I just ignore them completely. It's just a bid on their parts to bump their "friends" number up.

Curlywurly, you jest, surely?

no jest, if he isn't responsible enough to moderate what he writes and understand the implications of it then he can't have it. I am sick of hearing "well everyone else does it", I don't give a monkey what others do, I expect a certain standard. I think it's different if he is "effing and jeffing" with his mates in person, however if he is doing it on a website, where he has friends of all ages who can see it then it's not on. He wouldn't speak like that in front of his friends at karate (many of whom are my age or older) or his aunts and uncles and I expect him not to do it where they can see and be offended on fb.

My Ds at 16 would have set up a secret fb account in a second if I had said he couldn't have one

Although tbh at 16 he wouldn't have asked me and I wouldn't have expected him too ,let alone monitor what he wrote on his wall

I am strongly with you mutha.
I work for the Police & we see no end of bullying and inappropriate language/behaviour etc via FB, not to mention if your children can lie to get on there in the 1st place have you thought about the paedeophiles that can lie to say they are also children - believe me it is commonplace & children of 10/11 should not have to know about or deal with grooming. It's not just dont talk to strangers anymore......
The longer you can keep them away the better in my opinion, fb is a place for boasters and people trying to pretend they have a life when in fact they dont because they spend all their time uploading photos etc (i'm not on it - in case you havent guessed!)