Note: This has been cross-posted at Stage of Life.
My "protective mother" instinct rears its head as soon as I hear about a preteen being on Facebook. I can't stop myself from expressing my opinions on the topic, knowing fully well that I am NOT the keeper of other people's kids. Their house, their rules. But it grates on me to see how some parents are either unaware of the potential harm of letting their child go unsupervised on the Internet or are too confident that their child is somehow capable of skirting all danger and is, unlike other kids his/her age, is super responsible.
My main concern is two-fold. One, the kids are clearly underage according to FaceBook's written policy on minimum age for members (13 years). This means they will have to lie about their age to open a Facebook account. Which, in turn, means the parents are either encouraging the lying or ignoring it. Both options don't seem too good to me. Where will they stop then? How will they explain to their kids that some lying is okay but otherwise one should never lie?
Two, one can control what they put on their Facebook wall, but they cannot control what others will put on theirs. This increases the risk of a child coming across age-inappropriate material. I once followed a link to a page on violence against women. Some images there shook me and left me unsettled for days. I am 40. How can I expect my 12 year old daughter or 9 year old niece to not be affected by such images?
Granted I cannot protect my kids from every single harm out there but I can at least try! Maybe I am being too conservative but I feel given the form Facebook is taking (one can create pages and groups for anything), there is a high chance that a child will be exposed to inappropriate material.
In addition to all this, how can we guarantee that all the people our kids "friend" on Facebook are actually kids their age or responsible adults? How do we guarantee that one of them is not a pedophile masquerading as a 14 year old cool boy? We have heard enough stories about kids who made online friends and then fell into harm's way when a "friend" lured them someplace and turned out not to be who the kids expected them to be.
I am a big proponent of not suffocating kids with our caution and rules. I strongly believe that parental control must be relaxed gradually as our children grow older. I believe doing so teaches our kids to be responsible and alert for their own safety. But I am also a staunch believer of age-appropriateness of things and I don't think FaceBook, or any other social networking site, that lets adults and kids mingle anonymously (if they so choose) is a good idea for very young kids. Most times, these kids spend unsupervised time on FaceBook/internet.
What do you think? Am I being over-protective or too conservative? What age did you allow your kids to open a Facebook account? Or what age will you allow it at? What age did your kids get their first email IDs. What measures did you take to let them have some freedom but to keep an eye on things at the same time?
Most importantly, how much privacy do you think young kids are entitled to? Facebook and other social networking sites aren't the only danger our kids face online. It is, in fact, a matter of their "online habits" (if you will, for lack of a better term) in general that we need to be more aware of. What safe internet-browsing practices do you have your kids follow? How much control do you exercise on their online activity and how and when will you relax that control?
My "protective mother" instinct rears its head as soon as I hear about a preteen being on Facebook. I can't stop myself from expressing my opinions on the topic, knowing fully well that I am NOT the keeper of other people's kids. Their house, their rules. But it grates on me to see how some parents are either unaware of the potential harm of letting their child go unsupervised on the Internet or are too confident that their child is somehow capable of skirting all danger and is, unlike other kids his/her age, is super responsible.
My main concern is two-fold. One, the kids are clearly underage according to FaceBook's written policy on minimum age for members (13 years). This means they will have to lie about their age to open a Facebook account. Which, in turn, means the parents are either encouraging the lying or ignoring it. Both options don't seem too good to me. Where will they stop then? How will they explain to their kids that some lying is okay but otherwise one should never lie?
Two, one can control what they put on their Facebook wall, but they cannot control what others will put on theirs. This increases the risk of a child coming across age-inappropriate material. I once followed a link to a page on violence against women. Some images there shook me and left me unsettled for days. I am 40. How can I expect my 12 year old daughter or 9 year old niece to not be affected by such images?
Granted I cannot protect my kids from every single harm out there but I can at least try! Maybe I am being too conservative but I feel given the form Facebook is taking (one can create pages and groups for anything), there is a high chance that a child will be exposed to inappropriate material.
In addition to all this, how can we guarantee that all the people our kids "friend" on Facebook are actually kids their age or responsible adults? How do we guarantee that one of them is not a pedophile masquerading as a 14 year old cool boy? We have heard enough stories about kids who made online friends and then fell into harm's way when a "friend" lured them someplace and turned out not to be who the kids expected them to be.
I am a big proponent of not suffocating kids with our caution and rules. I strongly believe that parental control must be relaxed gradually as our children grow older. I believe doing so teaches our kids to be responsible and alert for their own safety. But I am also a staunch believer of age-appropriateness of things and I don't think FaceBook, or any other social networking site, that lets adults and kids mingle anonymously (if they so choose) is a good idea for very young kids. Most times, these kids spend unsupervised time on FaceBook/internet.
What do you think? Am I being over-protective or too conservative? What age did you allow your kids to open a Facebook account? Or what age will you allow it at? What age did your kids get their first email IDs. What measures did you take to let them have some freedom but to keep an eye on things at the same time?
Most importantly, how much privacy do you think young kids are entitled to? Facebook and other social networking sites aren't the only danger our kids face online. It is, in fact, a matter of their "online habits" (if you will, for lack of a better term) in general that we need to be more aware of. What safe internet-browsing practices do you have your kids follow? How much control do you exercise on their online activity and how and when will you relax that control?
You are on the dot. It is a major concern. I'd say its best to not allow them to open an FB account until they are 13/15 when they MUST be made aware of all things good or evil. I believe it must be a helpful monitoring rather than prying. It would perhaps make things easier if there are no/little taboo topics to discuss. This would make the child hopefully less inhibited by parental monitoring... just thinking out loud. Not sure if these'd work though
ReplyDeleteValid questions, Cee. I'm a big believer in shared computers that face the world. Also in talking about what's happening online just like my mother chatted with me about school and the park.
ReplyDeleteLet's see how it all pans out as the boy grows older. It's obviously not an issue yet.
Meg is soon to be 14 year old and I am still fighting signing her up for a Facebook account. I got her an email address when she was about 8 but she didn't care much for it till she started middle school. I promised to let her get a facebook account if I was in her friend list when she starts high school. This because she has friends moving around the country already that she'd like to stay in touch with :) If you are paranoid, then you have company is all I can say!
ReplyDeleteOh God. And I thought I was having it tough with potty training. Suddenly two seems like a delightfully easy age!
ReplyDeleteFB account can wait till atleast 14-15 ... and of course I would want to be in her friends list. (by then I hope I will learn to not comment much about some silly discussion amongst her friends)
ReplyDeleteI created an gmail id for my girl when she was 5. She doesn't know how how to land in the gmail login page. Infact she doesn't care too much about it. But when she sees me on my gmail account, she is reminded of her ... and requests me to login to her account. Her id is shared with only her grandparents and she expects them to send her message :)
I'm with Sue on the shared computers. As long as the kids were home, our common computer was always in the dining room, which was the central, open area of whichever house we lived in. That was pre-FB, but I did worry about them accessing sleazy sites. As of now, I'm only on the older son's friends list, on pain of never ever commenting there. I'm free to mail him/message him, but not publicly. Fair enough, I guess.
ReplyDeleteBetter being paranoid than having the kid land up in a sticky situation.
Chanced upon ur blog and saw ur post. I think minimum age shud be 13/15; mom n dad shud be on fren list n they shud be allowed to add only their known friends on the list.. Not any random ppl
ReplyDeleteChanced upon ur blog and saw ur post. I think minimum age shud be 13/15; mom n dad shud be on fren list n they shud be allowed to add only their known friends on the list.. Not any random ppl
ReplyDelete