Facebook is talking about issuing accounts to children 12 and under. As of today, you are supposed to be 13 to open an account, though there is no real way to police this. Allowing any kid to have a Facebook account is a controversial subject. Some parents I talk to are adamantly against it. These parents tend to have younger kids and have not yet faced the realities of having a pre-teen / teenager. In actuality, once you have a middle schooler,it becomes very difficult to stop them from having a Facebook account. Not only has it become an integral part of teens’social life, but it also becomes increasingly difficult to keep them from starting one.
I never “allowed”my son to start his Facebook account. One day I just realized he had it. He used his school email account to open it without any parental approval required. There was no ID check confirming he was of legal age. He was actually only 12 when he opened it. I happened to stumble across an email one day,while checking his emails, which I do from time to time, when I saw an something notifying him of a message on Facebook. Of course I went thru the roof, but also realized that in today’s day of rampant technology, it is increasingly difficult to shield your kids from everything.
One of the big differences I’ve discovered between parenting my 8 year old kids vs my middle schooler is with my younger children I can still control them and shield them from things. But with my middle schooler, I have to let him spread his wings,and in doing so, I can’t shield and control everything. I still do my regular check ins and monitor, but it’s impossible for me to shield. So, instead of forcing a “Facebook Shutdown” when I discovered my son’s account, I decided to sit down with him and talk about the rules. No posting pictures of yourself or others. No “friending”strangers. You must maintain high privacy settings. You must be my friend. You must give me your account password so that I can monitor your account. You may not post when we are traveling or when your parents are out of town. The list went on.
And so, for the past year since he started his account, life on Facebook has gone pretty well because I heavily monitor his usage. It is clear, however, that many of my son’s peers are not monitored the way my son is. Some of them even have screen names that make me wonder if their parents even know they have the account. These kids regularly post inappropriate pictures of themselves or mean comments about peers. Some of the inappropriate posts include sexually suggestive pictures and comments. And in speaking with parents from all over, this is a rampant problem. Finding a solution is the challenge.
Facebook is in no way obligated to maintain parental controls. They are a business entitled to chose how it conducts itself, provided it’s legal. However, if children under 18 are free to post sexually oriented content then I think Facebook should be held accountable. There comes a time when social responsibility overrides business. I became curious, wondering what parental controls exist on Facebook, after all,there must be some, right? Wrong!
First, if you go to the help section on Facebook and type in “parental controls” you get a message that says “no results found”. That’s the first bad sign. Then, if you dig deeper you do find a section for monitoring kids’ pages if they are over 13. However, Facebook tells you that you can’t do anything. It is “forbidden by law” for them to give you access or have any control over your 13 or older child’s Facebook page. Never mind that they are 13. If they are under 13, you can report it, but there is still no guarantee anything will be done! Regardless, even at 13, I never gave my consent for my child to have the account in the first place! My only power would be to totally cut him off of all internet access, which I can really only do at home. Between school, friends’ computers, etc., you can’t stop it, and Facebook denies us of any parental rights. The whole argument of setting up restrictions with your child is utterly and completely impossible!
But my favorite is that Facebook tells you under their “Parents” section in the Safety and You guide that one way parents can monitor their kids Facebook usage is to ask their kids to “show them the ropes”. After all, it admits, that often the kids today know more about internet controls than the parents. Oh,I see. So they think that if we simply ask our kids to tell us how to keep track of them so we can police their activity, that our kids will hand over all the knowledge we need to have. What hole are these people living in!
Of course kids know more than most parents when it comes to the internet. They also know ways to sneak around those of us who monitor. And internet companies like Facebook know this. But they want eyeballs and registered users, so they don’t care. The only way they’ll change is if users put pressure on them to change.
Here is the point, it is SSSOOO easy for kids to open their own secret email account. It is SSSSOOOO easy for them to then open a secret Facebook account. And Facebook has done NOTHING in attempt to change this. They simply hide behind “federal law forbids” statements. Sorry, but that’s a crock of you know what!
And now they’re talking about a pages for 12 and younger? How about they first improve what they already have? I can tell you I’m much less concerned about what my 8 year old will post or read than what my 13 year old will. The problem is that these are not easy issues to resolve, and if Facebook actually does something to fix these problems they may slow their growth or reduce the actual number of registered users. And we all know that Facebook needs every registered users they can get in order to justify that stock price!
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