I remember when I built my first community learning about the COPPA rulings to prevent underaged children signing up to participate. Sadly children are still signing up to social networking sites in their droves.
Ofcom research for instance revealed that children as young as 8 are signing up for Facebook accounts. Their research found that a quarter of children aged 8-12 who use the internet at home say they have a profile on Facebook, Bebo or MySpace.
I suspect many of us aren't that surprised by that fact. After all, we were all children once and no doubt did many things behind our parents back. To many kids I guess Facebook et al is like the forbidden fruit that is too tantalising to resist.
Now that's one thing. New research suggests however that the parents of these children are actually helping them to sign up whilst underage.
- The average age children join Facebook is 12, with 55% of 12 year olds having an account
- 36% of parents knew their child had joined before they were legally allowed
- Of these 68% actually helped them create their profile
This is always a really tricky one. My daughter's 10 years old and was one of the last in her class at school to get access to facebook. I was cynical when she said "everyone else has it" but, as anyone with facebook knows, once you're signed up, you quickly find out whether that's the truth and it was.
I took the decision to allow her access to it because we were able to sit down and discuss what's appropriate and inappropriate; I have her password and she's connected to me so I can see status updates etc.
I'm in no doubt I'm very lucky to have a 10 year old daughter who's prepared to discuss these things with Dad. Many kids will sign up for these services using false dates of birth and never tell their parents.
Is it better to teach them or wait until she's 13 years old and she then signs up without my knowledge? I just hope she remains as open to discussing these things with me as she grows into a teenager and beyond.
I'm with Colin on this. Think of it like one of your previous posts on whether social media should be banned at work. For me kids will want to get access to this sort of thing, so it's whether they do it under your guidance or they do it without your guidance.
I'm one of those parents I'm afraid. Like Colin, I'd much rather they learn about things like privacy and online security from me than just going off and doing their own thing.