Facebook to lift its ban on users under 13: your thoughts?

[HelenMumsnet]

Hello.

We hear through the DM grapevine that Facebook is getting set to lift its ban on under-13s opening accounts and joining up.

We're wondering what you all think about this.

Do you think under-13s should be able to have Facebook accounts? If so, would you be relaxed about your pre-teen child having one? If not, what exactly concerns you about children being on Facebook before the age of 13?

Or are we the sort of parents who, knowing the child is going to do it anyway, think it better that they do so in a supervised and safe environment? Unlike those with their heads in the sand who say "my child is never going to ..." whilst their child goes off and does it unsupervised and without any precautions.

soup what about the private messages that can be sent on fb. Can you monitor those - asking as I don't actually know, just assuming that pm's are actually private?

Linking underage facebook to underage sex is a interesting angle to take. I feel the same about both- I'd rather they did neither but if they were going to, I'd want it to be safe and protected and so be the kind of parent who has open dialogue with my kids.

How do you supervise a child who doesn't know what risks fb presents to them, soupy? Your child may have really high security settings but their friends may not. Adoptive/foster parents are not allowed to change their child's birth name so if they have a very unusual name, it would be horribly easy to track them down if you were so inclined.

morethanpotatoprints - unlike many years ago, many children who are adopted nowadays are not given up freely by their parents but are taken away because they are at serious risk of abuse.

Mmmm, so are we going to let our children drive cars before 17, steal from shops etc? Where is the line drawn?

That train of thought works equally well with smoking and drinking...however I thought we were talking about pre teens

I monitor dd's pms. I screen her emails, and her facebook account. Since pms get emailed, and I see all her emails, nothing on there is private. I will let her have more privacy when she is a bit older, but at 11 I want to keep an eye on it for now. She doesn't mind at all. She is more private with her SMS, but at least that is safer than online.

They already use it. I had an invitation today from my nine year old nephew. I don't agree with it at all but it is happening

I am not trying to wind anybody up by the way, so please dont get cross, but it is a difficult argument to have with any child if "some " rules can be broken?

Landrover- I agree, it can lead to kids being over boundaries.

funnily enough we just got a letter from my sons infant school complaining about cyber bullying and bad mouthing the school. I do not agree with under 13's using the site but then again might be good to keep an eye on their parents : )

Gymbob.
Sorry about my naivity, I understand now and was being a bit thick. I can see how difficult this would be for children and parents in your position. I know nothing of the system as it was so much different years ago. If its any consolation I think self respecting parents who monitor their childrens internet activity would not allow fb anyway. As I said my dd won't be on fb at all.

Totally agree with maryz-My DD joined at 12 and was completely supervised,at the 'official' age I may have felt less of a personal responsibility because it is allowed

I know morethanpotatoprints when I was a child we didn't even have a house phone for years, we used the big red call box in the next street. Life was so much simpler then - the peer pressure today is horrendous .

Personally, I can't understand why anyone would want to put their lives in the public domain like that (fb I mean). I understand employers now search fb for anything derogatory about their potential employees - if I posted something when I was young and stupid, it would still be there in 20 years time wouldn't it

morethanpotatoprints if a child say had been groomed by their father say and was placed in foster carer for their own saftey , said father or groomer may take the chance t re start the grooming over face book to try to "explain away" the abuse cast ss and foster carer in the evil role and in some cases parents coarece their bio children to run away or even

Give scripts to children to evoke against foster carers in the hope they will get their child back

It's the same reason bio parents are nth allowed to give their children mobile phones or get their children to talk to people over the phone during contact.

Even though these people are the childrens parents they are still the abuser and the child their victim I know of no other circumstances were it would be considered ok for a abuser to keep in contact with their victim

That's just one reason why the other is as we saw from the sex gang up north chikdren in care are vurable to making inaprorate connections with people
It other words their more likey to be swept up by the not so nice elements of society.

Gymbob parents seemly and young people are not aware that collages and unis now goggle candidates also every boss worth his or her salt do also

Fb profiles can be used as evidence in court

And a funny picture of you doing moon or slagging some girl off when your 16 migh seem funny but not so clever when your 18 and want to get in to Oxford

Mrbojangles - surely the sort of things your talking about are done by late teens (or older!) not kids under 13. Same with the sex gang in Rochdale - the girls were over 13 (and groomed on the streets not FB if I recall correctly?)

It's a totally mad idea. The bullying situation is out of hand already or so it seems. I can see the writing on the wall for Facebook. It won't even exist in five years. But we shall see. I expect a lot of under 13's are on it already. So they will just try and attract younger and younger people.

purpleroses I myself am a fc and I can assure you parents with children as young a 7 will try and contact the children any way they can we have had parents try and sneak mobiles to the children in contact

Fb is dangerous beause the foster carer then has to add herself to monitor the fc then the bio parent then has acesss to the foster carer I have know parents to work out what school a child attends from the school uniform or work out were somone lives from the comments and pictures

Many of the parents are very desprate and make poor desisions (hence their chikdren being in care )

Also grooming starts at a young age chidren may not be actally abused until late teens but the brain washing starts long before

If a child is savy and have a good open relationship with the parents and there are no circumstnaces which could make life difficult then I can understand the appeal. However, I am a tad scared of Facebook as my Stalker resurfaced the minute I set up an account. Needless to say as soon as I twigged I closed it down again as did DH but it still makes me shudder to think. As Mrbojangles just said school uniforn alone could help someone to figure out the location of someone and as we live on the same street as my dc's school I don't even want to take the risk. I can't stop everyone putting up photos of myself and my children and I can't prevent the people I know from accepting strangers as freinds to make their friend count look good but I can, for the time being, keep my family off of the site. My worry would be that families in familiar circumstances would find themselves either being put at risk by their young child being on line and not fully understanding the implications or by having to scare the life out of young children by explaining to them that there is some crazy person out there who if they found out where we lived could possible hurt us. I am not ready to have that kind of conversation with my children. I don't want to have to talk to them about what happened to me untill they are old enough to understand and I dread the day that such a conversation needs to be had.
I know there are children using it at the moment and maybe it is a good thing if it means more safeguards but I really do think that some children under the age of 13 are too young to fully understand the wider implications.

"Adoptive/foster parents are not allowed to change their child's birth name so if they have a very unusual name, it would be horribly easy to track them down if you were so inclined."

Well, several of my children's friends are not registered on FB under their real names so having an unusual real name is irrelevant. Of course, if you know any of their friends' names you can hop through friend lists and find them if they have photos or other identifying info. However, for the vast majority of children, this isn't an issue is it?

WRT personal messages and online chat, no I can't supervise that. However, I know my children and I know everyone on their friend list and based on that I trust them. TBH, they barely use FB anyway. DS1 is now 13 and, obviously, once he went to secondary school I lost control of knowing who his friends are. I can tell he is fine though by watching his behaviour - there is no cyber bullying going on there for example. I can't control what they can't about online in the same way I can't control what they chat about at school. I can make sure that the parental controls are in place to avoid "accidental" discovery of porn and we have had The Chat about internet safety, what to do if they come across something inappropriate and that they and talk to me about anything - I won't be angry.

I have done my personal risk assessment and I am happy with how things are working. As DS1 gets older I will have a chat to him about how he should think about what he posts and how it will be there forever. His school had a huge lecture about FB postings a year back after a prospective parent printed out page of what she deemed "inappropriate" postings from pupils and sent it to the headmaster. He is therefore already aware that there can be consequences.

WRT alcohol, sex and driving cars, yes I would let my children do those things earlier if I was certain that it was safe, in a controlled environment and they were protected. In the case of cars, obviously this would be on private land and completely supervised! As children we all had a go at driving a car on private land before turning 17 and we also had a moped we used to ride round our garden (I must have been under 11 for that now I think of it).

Insofar as making tho children about boundaries, I disagree. I think it has made mine realise that when I do say no, it is for a very good reason and I mean it. They know that if I think something OK then I will agree albeit with certain restrictions/conditions.

Everyone makes their own decisions for their own children. Whatever the given age limit on FB, if you do not deem it right for your child then don't let them have it.

I don't accept friend requests from any children I know, up to at least 16yo as I don't want to have to censor my own conversations (not that I swear etc on FB). I don't think Facebook is the right place for kids, but think that they should have something similar just for them which is a lesser site, for chat and photos. I'd make adding someone practically impossible unless you know every little bit of info about them, so you know you are only adding friends.

I'd also suggest that when the kids set it up they have to input their parents email address, in order that the parent is kept in the loop of passwords etc.

I also think that young DCs shouldn't have smartphones and should use a communal PC. I am an ogre.

I am entirely with soupdragon.

DS1 got a FB account at 12.5 (at the suggestion of MNetters, actually, to try and improve his social integration at school!).

He belongs to only one group, his tutor group, and otherwise has maybe 3 other 'friends'. I must say, though, that it's the girls on there who'd give me more cause for alarm! A couple have made their photos available to all and a few of the pictures are a bit close to the mark, shall we say! Anyway, with DS, yes, we have the passwords, have ramped up the security settings, had The Chat etc. And we talk a lot about 'stuff'. So we have done what we can to ensure his on-line 'safety'. But we know we can't always protect him against getting inappropriate photos of him, drunk at 17 etc put on FB by others.

I guess another factor for me is that I am older than a lot of mums so my friends don't use FB to chat at all.I wouldn't want my younger work mates to see some stuff I might write, either- I write far more incendiary stuff here on MN, but I'm anonymous here!

Finally, fwiw, I think FB will crash and burn in a couple of years. 'Valuing' it at however much they have is really like plucking a figure out of thin air. I am still amazed that in 2012, no one has mentioned the Emperor's New Clothes and that FB advertising really isn't worth those sums of money. Do you ever even glance at the ads?

I don't want mine on there...she would see the uber crap that friends of her friends posted....nightmare. Some people link to very unsuitable sites and videos.

My twelve year old son is on FB 7 has been since he was eleven. We have the rule that I'm all over it like a rash, or no FB. I look at everything and often. I take the view that this isn't going away, so embrace it.