Kids and FB

LadyRed7

So i feel so "old" when i see my cousin's kids who are anywhere from 7-11 on FB? Seems so mature for them.

Thoughts? 

SeptemberBride'08

Agreed. I hope when/if I can have kids that I can hold them off this kind of stuff. Kids are exposed to so much stuff so early.

stargirl0508

Did their parents set up their accounts?  You are supposed to be 13 to use Facebook, it's right in the terms and conditions when you sign up.  This comes up alot with bullying issues at school and we tell parents about the age requirement and they usually have no clue since the kid signed up themselves, or say they set it up for the kid.  

Honeydew1894

That does seem really young. While there are pretty decent privacy settings, I would still definitely NOT want our child on FB til at least HS.

Dar080808

I have cousins on it and some are really young.  I know one uses facebook only to farm and her mom has it set up so she can't do much besides that with it.

My issue is with her older sister.  She's a freshman in high school and the stuff out of her mouth makes me want to cringe!  She swears on her status updates, she's constantly TMI (she wrote about wearing a skirt to her boyfriends house the other day and ...) and she fights with her mom ON facebook!  I seriously think I should de-friend her so I don't hear the drama anymore because it's silly.  The girl needs to grow up and actually do some school work so she passes and doesn't go to summer school again!

Tiffgoddess

I have two sisters, one is in 6th grade and one is in 8th grade.  They both have facebook.  They both have privacy settings set by our mother and between me, my brother (who is 28), my mom and their dad... there are more than enough people monitoring the activity going on on their pages.  Honestly though, there isn't anything awful going on on their pages.  On the 6th grader's she talks about ballet and her birds, and my baby in the belly now:)  The 8th graders it is basically her girlfriends saying how much they love each other and how much they are bestest friends.  No bullying or anything like that, thank goodness!  We know they are responsible enough to have them, and if any funny business happens then they will be shut down.   

Honestly, I think some of these girls MOTHERS are far FAR worse than these kids!  A little background, I am very involved in my younger sisters' lives, basically like a second mom, if my mom can't take them somewhere, then I do, ever since they were in nursery school.. so I got to know a lot of their friends mothers pretty well.  Long story short, I literally had to block one mother because she went on a totally immature tyrade about how my sister has Uggs and I-Pods and my mom should be ashamed of herself for getting them for her because kids with Uggs and I-Pods are mean and rude and making up for their lack of self esteem/morales by wanting these things, and how her kid is the best because she doesn't have these things (which is sooo funny to me because this girl ALWAYS asks my sister to borrow her Uggs because her mother will not buy them for her).  So yeah, she got blocked.

stargirl0508

Privacy settings are set by the user, so even if the parent set them up, if the kid is savvy enough, they can change them after that.  I'm not saying that everyone's little cousins and stuff are doing that, just that it's totally possible.  Unless mom and dad know the password and login to check things themselves periodically, then, the user (kid) can definitely change who can see what.  Even if you think you can see everything they are doing, if they know enough and manipulate the settings, they can hide a whole bunch of stuff.  I hide tons from certain groups of FB friends (aunts/uncles, etc).  They would never know what they can't see unless they looked at my wall with someone else's account.  

jewelsonu

my neice and nephews have it and they are 10-14.  I have 9000 requests for farmville, petville, mafia and 700 quizzes on my page now. plus as soon as they see me online they IM me.

LadyRed7

star- i don't know if their parents set up the accounts, i guess i would assume so. 

I know there are privacy settings and all, but like someone said, it concerns me that there are such web savvy kids that know there way around this stuff better than some adults. I also wonder once they are on FB, what is to stop them from looking at friend's pages that perhaps don't have the same settings?

Ugh... all this scares me about parenting. Golly, all i was worrying about at age 7 was Barbie and Ken.  

mrsoc

It is a very scary world out there in cyberspace.  When our LOs get to be that age, one family computer in a common area, with limited time is going to be the rule. Who knows by then, they will probably build computers into the windows of your home, or something crazy....

MsZoeB

I just posted this over on the bump board. My DH's great nephew of 5 has an account. I have no idea what it will be used for but it doesn't seem necessary.