Facebook for Pre-Teens
25 May, 2011
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in a meeting last week that he wishes to reduce the minimum age limit for users on Facebook from 13 years to 10 years of age.
The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) currently legislates that websites which collect information about users (like Facebook) are not allowed to accept users under 13. Zuckerberg is keen to change this so that younger kids can be allowed on Facebook, in the name of education. While speaking at a NewSchools Summit in California this week, he outlined how educating kids about the Internet should start at a younger age, and by doing so, we can learn how to make the Internet a safer place for children.
“That will be a fight we take on at some point,” CNN reported him as saying “My philosophy is that for education you need to start at a really, really young age. Because of the restrictions we haven’t even begun this learning process. If they’re lifted then we’d start to learn what works. We’d take a lot of precautions to make sure that they [younger kids] are safe.”
This comes off the back of recent news that there are 7.5 million under age Facebook users worldwide.
I think that this may actually be a good move if Zuckerman can pull it off. It will at least mean that Facebook have to take those users safety seriously and will carry a level of moral and practical responsibility for their safety on the site. Currently Facebook do have a number of measures to improve users safety on the site but these do not currently go nearly far enough.
One thing that would be a great compromise is if Facebook automatically defaulted all users privacy settings to "friends only". Currently all users default setting on Facebook are to allow all other users to see what you post and for you to be able to see all content from all other users. Changing this would not restrict users too much and would still allow the site to be used in the social sense that is intended. It would just mean that kids cannot be contacted by people that they do not know. We recently wrote an article on how to set up Facebook privacy settings to protect your kids.
Currently Facebook do take some measures to support kids and their families: There is the Facebook Family Centre which has lots of articles, tools and videos for parents, teenagers and teachers as well as links to the police if you do have serious issues on the site. This was recently updated with support from the White House along with an updated reporting system where users can report situations that they do not like on the Facebook site. There is also a Facebook Safety Facebook page which carries a feed of recent internet safety news. However this feed is not the most objective and sticks clearly to Zuckerbergs philisophy of minimal intervention.
We will keep you updated as this story progresses and will also keep you constantly updated with new tips and ideas to keep your kids safe online.
