Too young for Facebook?

[meresal]

The dreaded day has come... I just got a friend request from my 12 yo niece, who is still in 6th grade.

My sister, her mom, was notorious for having "grown up" very quickly, and she is very pushy about my niece acting older than her age as well. Pushing her out of phases such as Miley Cirus and other things like of the like.

I knew it would happen, but I was really hoping she would at least wait until she was 13. I really don't want to friend her, not because I put inappropriate things on Facebook, but they just aren't things that I would talk to a 12 yo about.

Do any of you know young kids that are on Facebook?

 

[monarch64]

Meresal, I have cousins and one friend''s son who are below the age of 14 that have "friended" me on FB. Fortunately, you can adjust your privacy settings to exclude certain groups from being able to view your wall posts or information, etc. I sometimes post things that are PG-PG13 in nature and I''d hate for their parents to hear about cousin Monnie who is talking about her hot dates or whatever. That would just be weird!

 

[yssie]

Facebook for 6th graders??

Remember when it was invite only by college? the good old days...


I don''t even have a facebook account, though, so maybe I shouldn''t talk

 

[charbie]

I gotcha beat. My dad''s gf''s grand-daughter has facebook, and she is SIX. Seriously. 6 yo.

However, its very innocent for her. She always heard everyone talking about their "zoo" and "farm" and would ask her parents if she could use their facebook for farmville, so they made her an account simply for that. I think her only friends are her parents, sisters, and grandparents, and she doesn''t know how to do anything but play on her zoo.

Mer; I''ve blocked certain coworkers and such from seeing pictutes, my wall, stuff like that. No one really would ever know the difference, since it just makes it appear like you never input that info. And I really didn''t want my boss to see any pictures from college that involved me and shot glasses...

 

[April20]

I got a friend request from my 13 year old brother earlier this year. I almost fell over. But then again, he''s the youngest by A LOT and gets away with doing things so much younger. Heck, we didn''t even have internet when I was growing up! A bunch of his friends are on FB too. It''s a different world for 13 year olds than it was when I was 13!

 

[meresal]

I completely understand about blocking, but here is my dilemma re: that...

My sister obviously thinks that niece is old enough to be part of all of "this", so if I block her from seeing things, I just worry that my sister would find out, and make some issue about it. This is the 40 yo sister that thought I purposely told the photog at our wedding to not put any of the pictures she and her family were in on the website...

I''ll go with blocking a few things for now. I''m just so shocked that she is on.

I can understand using it for games, but wow, 6. LOL! I wish this was for games.

And apparently I was wrong, I just spoke with my mom and she is in 7th grade.

 

[AprilBaby]

I thought FB had a rule you needed to be at least 13? And I would have NO problem not friending anyone under 18 even if they were family. Why do they need to look at your page? And why would you want to see theirs?

 

[luckystar112]

My 13-year-old cousin-in-law (or, DH''s cousin to make it easier), is my friend on FB. Personally, I see nothing wrong with it. It''s a heck of a lot safer than the yahoo! chat rooms me and my friend were frequenting in our teens.

 

[monarch64]

Date: 12/15/2009 9:12:07 PM
Author: luckystar112
My 13-year-old cousin-in-law (or, DH''s cousin to make it easier), is my friend on FB. Personally, I see nothing wrong with it. It''s a heck of a lot safer than the yahoo! chat rooms me and my friend were frequenting in our teens.

Dit-TOE. When I was in high school chat rooms were all the rage, unmoderated, etc., bad news.

 

[zhuzhu]

My nieces and nephew also have facebook accounts. I will not add them on my facbook because I don''t find my facebook network content to be either 1) any of their business or 2) age appropriate. I disagree with a lot of their parents'' parenting style, but since they are not my children, all I can do it maintain my boundary.

 

[meresal]

Date: 12/15/2009 9:12:07 PM
Author: luckystar112
My 13-year-old cousin-in-law (or, DH''s cousin to make it easier), is my friend on FB. Personally, I see nothing wrong with it. It''s a heck of a lot safer than the yahoo! chat rooms me and my friend were frequenting in our teens.

Tou-che!

 

[Kelli]

My 14 year old cousin is my friend, but that''s about as far as I''ll go. Funny thing is, she''s pretty sheltered and I don''t know that her parents know that she has it. Because I do believe them to be a bit over the top sometimes in their strictness, I''m not going to be the one to rat her out. I don''t put inappropriate things on there, but I DO put up pictures from parties and such, and parties usually include beers. I''m well over the legal drinking age so I don''t think there''s anything wrong with that, but it is the reason my cousin is the only young one I will accept. I''m a dance teacher and tell my kids on a regular basis that I don''t want to be rude but I won''t accept their requests. Not unless they''re very close to me anyway.

 

[miraclesrule]

The youngest person I have on my FB is my niece. She took a really long time to put out a friend request to me. I was dreading the day that she did.

I have become much more congnizant of my content because I have such an eclectic mix of friends. I cringe at some of the stuff my family posts every now and then....or some of our close friends. But hey, it isn''t anything she doesn''t already see or hear at home with my sister, so I accepted her request.

 

[swingirl]

I don't think adults and kids should be facebook friends. It's personal information, personal comments, and you cannot control comments or photos that other people post.

Adult conversation is just at a different level. Let the kids post with each other.

 

[monarch64]

Date: 12/15/2009 10:22:52 PM
Author: miraclesrule
The youngest person I have on my FB is my niece. She took a really long time to put out a friend request to me. I was dreading the day that she did.

I have become much more congnizant of my content because I have such an eclectic mix of friends. I cringe at some of the stuff my family posts every now and then....or some of our close friends. But hey, it isn''t anything she doesn''t already see or hear at home with my sister, so I accepted her request.

Me, too. Even though I can block some content from younger friends, I still hesitate to post certain things and that''s probably a good thing.

 

[JulieN]

I don''t friend any of my relatives who haven''t reached college age. Except my brother, because he''s cool.

 

[Lilac]

It''s funny this came up because my mom called me last week asking if I thought she should let my brother have a Facebook account. My mom doesn''t know anything about Facebook, but she knows I do, so she called asking what I thought. My brother is 9 years old - I told her my personal opinion is that he is *way* too young for Facebook, and if she did decide to let him have an account, it should be something that she blocks pretty much everyone and everything on it and she has the password to so she can check it frequently. She decided to take my advice and just not let him have one yet.

My 11 year old sister friended me a couple months ago and asked me not to tell my dad or stepmom about it because she would get in trouble. Put me in a pretty tough position - luckily they found out pretty quickly anyway and stopped her from using it.

I think it''s great that Facebook has added all these new blocking and privacy options, but I still don''t think kids should be on Facebook until at least high school.

 

[Smurfysmiles]

I have you all beat!!
My cat is only 1.5 and he has facebook

My nieces both have myspace and sometimes post questionable things. I am able to tell their mother if I see anything alarming which actually only happened once, so it can be a good thing

 

[monarch64]

Date: 12/15/2009 11:33:54 PM
Author: Smurfyimproved
I have you all beat!!
My cat is only 1.5 and he has facebook

My nieces both have myspace and sometimes post questionable things. I am able to tell their mother if I see anything alarming which actually only happened once, so it can be a good thing

Well, there''s the upside, Smurfy. You have the option of playing big bro/big sis or whatever older relative is appropriate and letting mom and dad know that something unsavory is happening. Not a bad thing, imo. I''m sure my adult relatives would appreciate my letting them know if I see something happening that is out of line in context of the age group.

 

[doodle]

Personally, I see nothing wrong whatsoever with a kid having a facebook, but I''m also of the mindset that a child''s internet usage should be supervised, so the parent always knows what the kid is getting into good or bad. We let my stepson play games, etc. online all the time, and if he wanted a facebook account, I''d have no problem with that, but guess who is in charge of his privacy settings. His using the internet while being monitored is also a good way for him to learn how to use it safely, and when he''s older, we''ll loosen up on how strictly we monitor his use. As far as younger people on my friends list, I have several (everyone in my family has 900 children, haha), but they''re in a special group on my privacy settings, and my privacy settings are about as strict as they can get because a friend of mine had her facebook page pulled up in the middle of a job interview, so I figured covering my behind was probably a good idea--luckily, my friend''s page didn''t have anything bad on it, but YIKES!

 

[MichelleCarmen]

12 is too young because what if she accepts "friends" from people she doesn't know (some of the friends I found from HS have their home addresses posted on the site)? People I've never heard of have tried to friend me. . .also, once I found who I thought was a relative and friended her and she said yes, and as it turned out it wasn't even the same person. She was just like, "okay," and then I saw the pictures of her and was thinking, "what in the world was SHE thinking?"

Also, keep in mind there are weirdos on FB. As an experiement, I set up a page for my cat (to see who would blindly accept him) and had over 300 accept in about 1.5 weeks. The only two people I know out of all those is my DH and my SIL.

 

[LilyKat]

I think it''s too young to have unsupervised access.

However, if she agrees to have her facebook activity supervised by a responsible adult (who would set the privacy settings for her, give advice on only accepting real-life friends, not making identifiable and personal information available to strangers), she should be ok.

 

[D&T]

when I did have a FB account, my youngest cousin of 13 years friended me, which was a little weird, but I accepted. Is there not a minimum age requirements to have an FB account? if not should there be one?

 

[Shoopy]

12 is not too young IMHO.

My younger cousins are on FB and I don''t "friend" them for the same reason you mentioned. I don''t post anything inappropriate but if I ever felt the need to, I don''t want to have to explain.

 

[Ara Ann]

My youngest son is 14.5 and just got a FB account a couple of months ago. He plays the games, etc. and only has people he actually knows as friends (DH and I included). Again, parental supervision is important, as with any activity kids are into...but that hardly ever happens as much as it should these days.