What’s your opinion of children using Facbook..?

I have had to deactivate an account my daughter set up. It turns out that most of her friends have got it with their parents consent. I can’t get my head round it. Why the hell does an eleven year old need Facebook.? Upon further investigation some of my friends have got their kids on Facebook, some as young as eight. I just don’t think they have maturity to use Facebook for what it is. Am I alone in thinking it’s ridiculous.?

One of my daughters freinds has a 5 year old brother with a Facebook account.

My daughter is 11 a number of her freinds use it. She hasn’t asked us cos she knows we’ll saynonuntil she’s 13 but she does feel left out sometimes.

It’s a blooming nightmare for schools lots of bullying and general nastinesd goes on

Daughter’s year school set up a year seven facebook page. 🙄

I chose to manage it, not fight it.

My older daughter wanted a FB a/c a few years back at 10 or 11. I showed her the conditions that said minimum age is 13 and she accepted that. When she turned 13 last year I helped her open an account. All her friends are quite sensible and I check it occasionally but there’s never anything on there that bothers me.

Younger daughter (11 tomorrow) thinks it’s only fair that she have a FB account as her sister has one. Told her no chance, she has to wait until she is 13 too.

Cyber-bullying is my main concern about kids using Facebook, there’s too much of it about.

It’s a minefield…the longer you can stay away, or in a managed way, the better. However, my experience is that text messaging is worse, especially between girls

Jnr (11) set an account up without us knowing about it. Annoyed initially, but then all his mates and cousins have them.

Apart from the odd bout of swearing they seem to be pretty good on it. Although we do have the occasional spat over Jnr sneaking his iPod to bed messaging mates through FB until all hours. When his iPod is downstairs (all the time now!) with us at night I’m shocked at the time of night it’s bleeping until with mates messaging – mostly girls it seems.

The threat of an account deactivation is a pretty potent punishment threat too!

I have a facebook account, but it’s pretty much unused, can’t stand it.

Mobile phones and Facebook is a cancer in schools and with kids now. There are too many parents who just don’t understand or don’t want to know what is going on.

It has its place, I keep in touch with friends who are local to me through it.

The thing that I do find strange about it is that people believe so much of it to be true and try to control what is posted sbout themselves.

My parents don’t mind me using it.

Tom Howard, aged 27 and 3 quarters.

I’ll second wwaswas. i abhore the idea of facebook and have seen first hand the damage it can do when kids set it up and the fights that start from it. (secondary school teacher)
I also saw my daughters friends (when they were 9 ish) ‘liking’ highly suggestive stuff which they plainly didn’t understand. I do think our eldest will be a bit more switched on and savvy when she’s 13. darn well hope so anyway.
as a teacher i hear all sorts of stories found by people linking on facebook with kids. not good. mind i also hear of kids and teachers battling on online gaming.
oh the joys!

Our daughter has another year to wait until she’s 13 and can have one. Than it’ll be the same deal as it is now with her email – we also have the pass words and we will check it, otherwise no Facebook or email.

My niece and some younger cousins are on there (not 13 yet) it’s a bit all consuming for them at times. I refused their friend requests as I don’t want to have to think about censoring what I say (if it’s fed directly to them) Once they are older they can read/digest/ignore as they want.

Most parents should probably have a serious look at what their kids can do, and what they can do. Router settings to block/restrict certain devices etc.

There are too many parents who just don’t understand or don’t want to know what is going on.

I don’t think my mother even knows what FB is, let alone that I’ve got an account.

Up to now my oldest (he’s 11) has had no interest in FB. But I see other children here in Germany who use their phones in class for posting FB messages to each other and it seems to be tolerated by the teachers. If they were caught doing that in a class I was teaching the phone would get confiscated until the end of the school day.

We were “de friended” sometime ago by our boys. I will remember that come the reading of the will.

My son also accepted that he had to wait until he was 13.

But I don’t monitor him, nor do I monitor his web usage.

sod facebook, get them on here for swearing, cyber bullying and inappropriate content

My sisters boyfriend from yonks ago, manages ex offenders of the dirty old man kind, I’m not sure of the figures now but one guy was found with either 30 or 300 teenage girls as his friends on facebook. Another friends daughter was “approached” online, so be careful out there. When my boys were growing up it was easy enough to just have the one computer in view, now with all the mobile devices it’s a different matter but joining facebook is kind of inevitable for kids these days, so teach your kids the dos & dont’s & teach them well. That being said my nephew set up two facebook accounts to keep my brothers prying eyes at bay 👿

Kids don’t NEED FB, they want it, anyway isn’t FB age restricted to 16 and and over?

I watch and wait for this to begin with my daughter (8)… shes asked about phones with the usual, so and so has got one, to which she gets the usual reply… and she knows what FB is but hasnt asked for her own account yet. This year her mum (my ex) bought her a netbook and she now is often playing on moshi monsters online, I know a couple of her school friends are on it and they leave each other messages… and so it begins.

I don’t know what the bloody worlds coming too! At 13+ you shouldn’t be sat in front of a bloody laptop FFS!

You should be blagging people to get you ten Bensons from the shop and drinking cider in the park, while indulging in clumsy fumblings, and possibly smashing stuff up. We’re going to hell in a handbasket, etc, etc…. 🙄

Make them watch ‘Criminal Minds’ for a few seasons – should drive home a point.

My daughter is 12 and has had it for over a year. It’s fine,we know her password and monitor it. She’s had the odd spat, but it’s been dealt with. All her friends have it, so it would be unfair to exclude her.

My daughter is 12 and has had it for over a year. It’s fine,we know her password and monitor it. She’s had the odd spat, but it’s been dealt with. All her friends have it, so it would be unfair to exclude her.

Pretty much the same thing here, and I’d say most of her friends have it (or Tuenti, similar sort of thing and more popular with kids/teens in Spain). I’ve been instilling basic net sense into her for ages now: make sure you know who you’re talking to, don’t send anything you’d be embarrassed to have all over school, etc. TBH I think it’s almost better for them to start now, while they’re still receptive to parental advice, than to start at 13-14.

All her friends have it

My kids learnt at a very early age that this held no sway for me, but my oldest son did once ask why I was so “anti everything” 😳

My eldest has it, nearly 12. Been asking on and off for a couple of years, but understood our reluctance, and the rules (13+). We caved last summer when he left primary school, with the fact he was going to a different secondary school from all his classmates being a factor. We know his password, mum’s a “friend” (I don’t do facebook) and he’s pretty sensible – we decided we’d rather cut a bit of slack and be aware of and involved with his online use rather than ban, and eventually find him doing it anyway behind our backs.

We were aware of, and troubled by the obvious implication of breaching the rules and having to put a false DoB into facebook to create an account. Looking into it, the 13 threshold is not necessarily there because anyone has actively decided that that would be safe limit – the US laws mean that to allow under 13s on (officially) facebook would be regulated much more closely and restricted more. We made a judgement call on that and so far, so good (as far as we know!).

There was a suggestion last week when the dropping crime figures came out that one factor might be that adolescents now have ways of socialising that don’t involve hanging around on street corners smashing things…

As for the bad stuff that goes on, kids have always, for example, had fights in playgrounds and sometimes they’re organised in advance. The different channel for this doesn’t seem important to be honest. As for the big bad world full of paediatricians paedophiles, for me I think the best way to help protect them is to be open, honest and involved with their online activities, but a realistic acceptance of the need to privacy, e.g. I expect to know who all his online “friends” are, but if there’s messages back and forth with a girl he likes, I don’t need to read it all. I do need to know that it’s a real, actual girl that he knows from the real world, though!

I see posts from people wishing their 2 year old happy birthday.

They must have advanced kids*

*Or be attention starved nobbers

If it has age restrictions how come the responsible parents allow their kids to open accounts?

Cannot get my head round that, especially when you hear so much about the dirty b*st*rds using such sites to groom kids?

its not facebook i’d be worried about, its sexting on snapchat!

WTF is that?

snapchat is a platform for sending picture messages to each other.
the twist being they auto delete after a short time period.

i know what i’d have used that for in my teens!

Cannot get my head round that, especially when you hear so much about the dirty b*st*rds using such sites to groom kids?

They used to do it by the swings in the playground. Did your parent;
a) ban you from the swings
b) tell you not to talk to strangers?

My Daughter got FB when she was nearly 12, we held off for as long as we could bear the ‘all my mates have it’ thing. Her mum and I are both friends, we know her password and the account is tied to my email address.

No none of them are emotionally mature enough to use it. We’ve shut it down on several occasions for various reasons, however it’s become a social tool and removing/excluding her from it brings it’s own problems of non inclusion.

FB, BBM and texting, they’ve become the outlet to let the world* know how much of a crap life these overstimulated hormonal teenagers are having.

Not like when I were a kid, no, we’d just sit in dark rooms listening to crap hair metal…

I just don’t think they have maturity to use Facebook for what it is

There are a lot of adults who don’t seem to have the maturity to use Faceache, never mind kids 🙂

*Or be attention starved nobbers

Over 90% of Facebook activity is just people after attention.

I don’t have any Facebooks, but my wife uses it almost obsessively. Judging by what her ‘friends’ post up it’s all just copying and pasting links to random stuff in the interwebs.

Very rarely an original thought of their own, just “here’s a random picture I thought was cute/funny”, that all their friends then feel obliged to ‘like’ so that they feel justified in their sense of humour.

Although I believe ‘liking’ a Facebook group is now the internationally recognised way of guaranteeing the resolution of all global plights and injustices, with the added bonus that nobody needs to physcially get off their arse and actually do something about anything.

FB, BBM and texting, they’ve become the outlet to let the world* know how much of a crap life these overstimulated hormonal teenagers are having.

Which has its advantages:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21041160

Smartphones have killed boredom
Vandalism began to fall sharply in 2006/07 – about the same time as smartphone sales began to take off in the UK.

Not like when I were a kid, no, we’d just sit in dark rooms listening to crap hair metal…

To be fair, you were still doing that at uni Nik… 🙂

yeah, thanks.

I’ll have you know I’d moved onto goth, bleepygoth and generally quite scarey music by my 20’s…. 😉

good job I’ve got STW though, I’d have to post more on FB otherwise…

Over 90% of Facebook activity is just people after attention.

I don’t have any Facebooks, but my wife uses it almost obsessively. Judging by what her ‘friends’ post up it’s all just copying and pasting links to random stuff in the interwebs.

Very rarely an original thought of their own, just “here’s a random picture I thought was cute/funny”, that all their friends then feel obliged to ‘like’ so that they feel justified in their sense of humour.

Wait, haven’t you just described STW? I do find it amusing the people who say all this stuff about Facebook but happily do the same on a forum with random people.

I have chums that organised their daughters FB from Birth. So that if she try’s to set up in the future without permission she canny.
They were also the most reluctant social network users ever, but as freelancers when the work started to roll in they changed their tune!

Over 90% of Facebook activity is just people after attention.

So 10% of users don’t understand the point of FB?

This is a brief generational problem. When kids who grew up in the digital age have kids they will know how to manage this stuff. Just need to accept that you are all dinosaurs!