Facebook Age

Morglin

Providing the settings are correct, and the parent has access to the account to look at, now and again, FB is perfectly safe for teenagers.

In my youth, before the net, we had to learn to protect ourselves, in real life. And today's teenagers just need to taught net safety alongside real life safety.

Lin

hazyjo

red_devil wrote: »

Dosent have to be. Why dont parents say to their kids you can have a phone when you can buy one yourself.

I'm sure some do. Although often the parents want their kids to have a phone for 'so called safety reasons'. (Won't bang on about their friends probably having one, about there still being phone boxes on streets, etc...)

I suppose a phone is seen as a lot more than 'just a phone to make calls on'. If parents had that attitude, where do they stop? X boxes (or whatever they are these days), games, computers, tablets and the like, non-essential clothes, trainers, shoes... hmmm.

Jx

CRANKY40

You do know that if you are friends with someone on facebook you can set it so that they don't see any of your updates etc, allowing you to be friends with your child and monitor what they do without them seeing a single thing that you post?

My dad would have loved facebook for us when we were teenagers. It would have saved him standing in the hall behind us moaning about the cost of phone calls while we chatted to our friends:rotfl:

tyllwyd

At 15 I agree with the posters who have been saying that he should be allowed to have an Facebook account. There are lots and lots of other options out there which teenagers can and will go and find, so I think it's better to set out the ground rules about privacy and safety so that the kids can protect themselves rather than just banning one particular site. Not allowing him to have an account is just making him look stupid to his friends when they ask why he hasn't got one.


Oh, and my teenage DD who has a facebook account still plays guitar and piano, draws (often on a graphics tablet which makes it easier to post her pictures online), writes (mostly online blogs), and is a member of a youth theatre group. She spends (wastes?) a lot of time online, but she does do a lot of creative stuff, and the internet helps her find an outlet for those things, it doesn't cancel it all out.

red_devil

tyllwyd wrote: »

At 15 I agree with the posters who have been saying that he should be allowed to have an Facebook account. There are lots and lots of other options out there which teenagers can and will go and find, so I think it's better to set out the ground rules about privacy and safety so that the kids can protect themselves rather than just banning one particular site. Not allowing him to have an account is just making him look stupid to his friends when they ask why he hasn't got one.

He could say he dosent want one.

tyllwyd

red_devil wrote: »

He could say he dosent want one.

Yes, he could - but then since he obviously does want one, he'd be lying, and is it fair to put him in a situation where he feels forced to lie to his friends?

cgk1

I'm surprised how naive some of the posters are on this thread - they don't think (like many teenagers) all the real action isn't happening on snapchat or other social media site that isn't full of parents?

susancs

OP, I can understand where you are coming from as my eldest is sixteen and I have struggled with whether she should have social networking sites the past. However I have like others done my research and put safety measures in place on such sites and explained interent safety with both my children. It is not all time wasting I have found as there closed group facebook pages and forums that are set up in sixth form for different subjects by both pupils and teachers that are used for discussion. They also use skype for revision sessions with other pupils. My daughter plays the piano and on occassion when she has not been able to play part of a piced well she has skyped a friend for help by showing them what she is doing and they will then show her where she has gone wrong. I even have a friend who tutors University biochemistry students via skype.

nickj_2

Tiglath wrote: »

My niece was allowed a Facebook account at about 13. I was so disturbed by the things she posted (jokes about BJs etc) that I discussed it with my sister, both the content and the fact that her profile was entirely public. Sister didn't see an issue with it and was 'liking' some of the jokes, and in the end I unfriended them both because it was too awful to observe

people have to realise that can check your FB stuff if the privacy settings are set to public , once it's out there in cyber space it can never be undone , the lesson is , don't put anything on there that you think may come back to haunt you in the future

barbarawright

To all those saying that they don't allow their teenage children to use certain social networking sites, how do you stop them?