I am a big advocate of Facebook’s age requirement specifications. Children under 13 have no place having a Facebook page. They are simply too young to manage a Facebook page with maturity.
As much as I approve of the age requirements, everyone knows that underage kids have no difficulties getting their Facebook page and Primary schools are teaming with underage Facebook users. This poses deep concerns from a cybersafety and cyberbullying point of view.
However, to suggest that parents of underage children should be reported to child services, both cheapens the important role that child services play in the welfare of our children and labels well-meaning but naive parents as incompetent and unfit for the job:
The issue of underage children creating profiles on social networking sites like Facebook and how to control it can be a problem for both privacy and security — something one UK principal apparently believes should be taken further.
Sister site CNet reports that as there are so many underage children on Facebook — signed up with or without parental consent — one educator believes official, legal consequences for breaking the rules should be put in place.
The school principal of St. Whites School in the Forest of Dean, Paul Woodward, has reason to believe over half of the students in his school are on social networking sites including Facebook. However, the problem is that St. Whites School’s attending students are between the ages of 4 and 11 — far below Facebook’s minimum age in relation to its Terms of Service.
Woodward, speaking to the Daily Mail, believes this issue is serious, and it may be something that official channels should become involved in:
“It’s illegal for you to do this, you shouldn’t be doing it for your child. You need to close down that account, or I might have to tell the safeguarding people that you are exposing your child to stuff that’s not suitable.”
The ’safeguarding people’ are child-protection services, usually reserved for cases of abuse, domestic problems or suspicions of violence. Perhaps this could be considered a drastic move, but as online networks often contain material not suitable for children of a certain age, the logic is understandable. If parents facilitate their child’s access to such networks, then perhaps they can be considered culpable.
A survey completed earlier this year by company Minor Monitor indicated that while over 70 percent of parents were concerned with their child’s activities on Facebook, 38 percent of all children on the social networking site are under 13 — and 4 percent are under 6 years of age.
Facebook says it removes approximately 20,000 underage users daily, but it is also important to note that parents are creating profiles for their children. New parents — you may want to remove that profile you created for your baby. (They probably won’t appreciated their baby photos being online once they’ve grown anyway).
Educating parents is a far more workable strategy than threatening them. I have never heard of a Principal who has gone public with a threat to report half the parents in their school to social services. That’s courage for you!
I commend Mr. Woodward for his conviction and his desire to see that his students stay safe and follow the law. I just think that in doing so, he went way too far.
Topical Teaching 