Kids and Facebook
Friday, May 11, 2012 at 2:59AM My son has an iPhone 3GS. He is 11 years old and absolutely loves it. His aunt gave it to him when she upgraded to an iPhone 4S.
He wants a Facebook account which I have said no to. Besides the fact that is too young, I just won't let him on such a forum because it has been embedded in my mind that bad things can happen on social networks to the young. Trolls, bullies and who knows who else are only too ready to make someone else's life a misery and so the answer remains a no for the forseeable future.
I was surprised to see that most of his friends are on Facebook even though they are below the consenting age for the network. Perhaps even more surprising is that I have no problem with his playing 15 rated games on his Xbox and watching 15 films if they are not too violent or graphic. He is mature for his age ane very sensible so I am happy for him to make choices in such matters. However, on Facebook choice often goes out of the window and I can't get my head away from the risks that it offers.
I admit that I personally hate Facebook because the content is often trivial, the design is terrible and it doesn't seem to have any redeeming features. 700 million people can't be wrong I suppose, but I still hate it and my son won't be setting up an account any time soon.
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Reader Comments (11)
700 million people CAN be wrong. Facebook is the worst and most stupid thing to happen to the Internet. Mind you, I have an account (it helps me to stay in touch with a few friends all over the world) but I do not spend more than 45 minutes in a month and never put any private things on it.
I have grave concerns about young children using Facebook. We have a PC suite at my church and several years ago I was using it when two young girls in the youth club said that I should join Facebook. I had heard of it but wasn't really very interested. They explained how it worked, set up my account and showed me how to accept friend requests. For the next few months I was happily accepting requests from whoever sent them but wasn't really thinking about it. I realise now I was being a bit of a numpty.
One day I was looking at my news feed and realised that, not only did I have lots of young girls as friends, but also that some of them had posted inappropriate pictures of themselves wearing skimpy clothes. In addition quite a few had no direct connection with the church. They were friends of friends of people I knew from the youth club. Alarm bells began to ring as I imagined parents saying, 'Why are you friends with a vicar who we don't even know?'!!
I immediately 'unfriended' everyone under the age of 18. I also told several parents in the church that their children were using FB and were under-age. The very next day a paedophile was arrested for the murder of a young girl he had been grooming on Facebook.
I don't think that I am an alarmist person but I do feel that many young people don't have the maturity to use it wisely. I wonder at the wisdom of many adults using it as well.
I really dislike Facebook and Twitter and use them only through gritted teeth for my company. I don't have personal accounts on either.
I've got three chief concerns:
1. Facebook is becoming the de facto way for friends to communicate, which shuts out people like me who don't have an account. That's the only way to talk to people, these days!
2. I was in a meeting last week where I mentioned that I neither Tweet nor have a Facebook account. Two colleagues of mine said the same thing. Our invited guests looked at the three of us like we were mad, and said "well you must be the only three left!". Really? Since when did it become weird not to have a Facebook account?
3. Content. Privacy is the key reason I'm not on such websites, but does anyone find the general standard of discourse pleasing on Facebook and Twitter? It's embarrassingly bad, in my view. It actually depresses me when I read the trite, thoughtless nonsense that people post on social networks. What will future historians and archaeologists think of us? Current historians have Samuel Pepys diary. In the future they'll be reading BBM transcripts and Tweets. Billions of snippets of shallow garbage. I cringed today when I heard that a string of Tweets are to be broadcast out toward the nearest star systems thought capable of supporting life. I'm now embarrassed at what aliens will think of us.
I want to see a social network with the following criteria:
* No one under the age of 25 (credit card validation).
* You must pass simple numeracy and literacy test to get in.
* Your membership must be voted on by peers and a collective of peers can exclude you, too.
* Any usage of text speak results in an instant lifetime ban.
* No posts UNDER 140 characters.
I'm not joking. I really am that much of a snob.
I'm also not a fan of Facebook. On the other hand I wnat to say that I take my hat off to Facebook and its philosophy and the way it's implemented - it's superb what it can do! This explains the success.
I have an account but like Hanon here, I use it very rarely. Mainly I just read the notifications by email as I keep the friends network very private. But sometimes I go there and I see loads of nonsense talk! It's just trivial stuff and lots of people post comments without any meaning...
But Facebook also hides a dark side. Very dark. It is used by millions to attract others (innocent people like children, etc) for dubious ends. At home nobody uses Facebook. Hardly will.
As for our kids, it will take time for me to allow them into that sort of things.
I also read the other day that Facebook pays some Mexican youngsters 1USD/hour to review all the "dark" and unpleasant stuff that drops into Facebook. They than have the choice to inform the central or eliminate contents. What I read is that many of these youngsters need psycological support in result for what they assit on the web. If this is true... and I think it is.
I can recommend some interesting reading for anyone interested in this kind of thing — two books I've read recently:
1.) Eli Pariser's "The Filter Bubble"
2.) Sherry Turkle's "Alone Together"
Pariser's book looks at the impact of personalised content, asking whether it narrows our worldview by reducing the notion of our world, whilst Turkle's looks at the social effects of reliance online communication. Both well worth reading.
Personally (for a different experiment), I disconnected from Facebook just after Christmas, and haven't looked back. One of the communications channels for my online course is Facebook, and some people only post on that, so I do occasionally log in to respond, but that's it.
I use Twitter for discussion at events, and that's very useful — I think my LinkedIn profile pushes things out over Twitter too, though.
It is used by millions to attract others (innocent people like children, etc) for dubious ends.
Is this your speculation, or a fact? I have no doubt that *some* use Facebook for this, but "millions"? Then again, some use *any* opportunity to engage in this sort of behaviour.
My eldest son uses Facebook. The amount of crap written is dreadful and I myself oppose Facebook totally. They make money out of selling your personal data. I have the same issues as others.
I use twitter but only sparingly to keep in touch with gadget news and a few friends. I keep my friends and followers to a very short list.
I had a linkedin account which is not used and is a historic thing. However work emailed everyone who used this and told us to use the new company name setup. Now we have been asked to invite all the clients we deal with to our network etc. I didn't setup my linkedin to be used in this manner. It is as if work are taking over my account and then telling me what to do with it.. Slightly uncomfortable about this too.
Interesting stuff
My expression of interest. I use twitter (a lot) personally, and slightly less so as the "voice" of the cricket club I belong to. I have a FB account that I rarely post to directly, but is linked to my Twitter feed. I have a LinkedIn account, and a FourSquare account, bot of which get little use.
Users here more than anywhere should appreciate the boundaries are changing. It's an online world. Our kids are growing up with what we had to learn to adapt to.
Yes, there is a lot of drivel and pointless stuff posted on social networking sites, but have you been down the pub for a chat lately? A lot of the conversation in bars and living rooms across the land is "drivel" too (well it is in our house ;-), and often no different to stuff posted on these sites.
However, they (and for me especially twitter) are a fantastic source of breaking news, information and often amusing/humerous stuff. You kust have to learn to separate the dross from the good stuff as in any other area of life.
and I agree, there are all sorts of concerns, especially about young children using these things - but although the risk is there, is it any greater than any other area of life?
If you talk to your kids and show them how to use these things properly, they'll be OK. In fact most of them are more familiar with them than us oldies now.
There has to be a line in the sand somewhere - 11 years old may be too young. But clearly it's not too young to have a connected smartphone.
Both my kids have connected phones and laptops (admittedly they're 15 and 17) but they've had them for a few years. i think we need to be aware of the potential risks, but also the potential benefits that social networking brings.
It is as if work are taking over my account and then telling me what to do with it.. Slightly uncomfortable about this too.
This does seem to be a trend. It's not a situation I've had to face, but I make a point of keeping my work and academic / personal interests separate, even though there is a substantial degree of overlap. I have a feeling that, if such an edict arose, I would probably set up a separate account for work, and use that just as much as required, but no more.
@Neil
I can tell you that we have a programme for youngsters and Sport at work and a couple of years ago we decided to enter the Facebook arena. As we were fresh and needed support, we did accept people without looking closely who they were. We had to stop accepting people at 3.000 because lots of these "friends" were exposing some "hot" pics together with some sayings attracting other people. As you may know, as Portuguese, we are very close to Brazil, and many of those were Brazilian.
The topics got a bit out of control and eventually we had a person that even used this channel to try and blackmail someone, saying he was molesting children (related to this programme). This was serious and we had to take action on this matter.
So... when I say millions I suspect that, if we had a mere 3.000 and already I see lots of this, I can only image around the world of 700 million. And unfortunately you must never forget that there is a black market of terrible things happening in lots of countries.
Where do you stop?
Do you stop them having phones? Internet access? Sleep overs? Take them out of school and keep them at home?
I'm not a parent yet so I've never had the kind of fear that some of you will have had. I still think kids have to be taught not to go home with strange men to see kittens and not to get involved with people they don't know on the internet. Stopping them from going out on their own and from having internet access doesn't teach them that.
As for facebook, I use it for keeping in touch with people that I wouldn't necessarily visit or write to individually. They're still friends, and I only have 24 people on there. I don't put anything on there I wouldn't want in the public domain.
I have FB and it's got me in touch with a lot of old friends and students. I have very few friends and my security settings are "friends only" for everything... I guess I trust that means what it says. I have, since my divorce, backed off posting a lot, and let alone anything too personal. But the problem with FB I find is that no matter how conservative or private I may be... I can't control other people posting pictures of me on a night out or whatever. It makes no difference whether I'm on FB or not, other people can also affect me... whether I'm aware of it or not.
When my kids reach FB age I am certainly going to teach them just how public it is and its consequences. But like someone mentioned before,,, at the end of the day I have to let go and hope they do okay. It is life, and we can't pretend it isn't happening. A friend of mine is a friend on her kids FB, so at least that way she has some idea of what's going on.