Should Young Kids Be on Facebook? Experts Are Skeptical

Over the weekend Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made comments suggesting he wants to get younger kids victimisation the social group networking site. Zuckerberg framed Facebook as a tool to help educate children more or less using the net ahead suggesting that COPPA, a authorities law designed to protect the online privacy of children under the age of 13, is standing in the way of that finish.

The quote has tired a ordinary bit of literary criticism online, including close to from us. Very much of the criticism is based on the fact that Facebook stands to earnings a zealous deal by collecting the personal details of kids under 13. But what do the experts suppose? Fundament Facebook be a useful tool for educating kids online or non?

Experts Aren't So Sure

Dr. Gwenn O'Keeffe, author of Cybersafe and collapse of Paediatrics Now an online resource for parents to rapidly and well learn new information about pediatrics, says that Zuckerberg is right to think that educating young kids about the Internet is imporant. "It's an interesting discussion because member citizenship is the focus of the online world right now." Dr. O'Keeffe and else experts altogether agreed that as using the Web becomes increasingly critical in our lives, teaching children how to constitute online responsibly at a young historic period put up give them a real leg up.

However, Dr. O'Keeffe besides suggested that Facebook may not represent in whatsoever position to ply that Education Department in its current form. "The lessons of digital citizenship have to start young, but I don't feel that Facebook is the venue to take over those lessons occur. A great deal of missteps happen on that site without a lot of coaching job."

Different experts concord that Facebook, at least in its current mannequin, isn't the top-grade place for kids to ascertain astir communicating online. Amanda Lenhart with the Cyberspace and Land Life Project of the Pew Research Center says it terminate beryllium hard for four-year-old kids to get the hang of social networks. "What's really a gainsay is that in a lot of these mediated spaces it can be very, very hard to remember who your audience is," Lenhart said. Lenhart suggested that that kind of confusion can lead to cyber-bullying or worse.

The experts were also skeptical that COPPA was stagnant in the way of Facebook. COPPA doesn't forbid kids from using whatsoever social networking sites only instead tries to supply shelter from unscrupulous advertisers trying to use their personal information. Dr. O' Keeffe says that function is important. targeted ads on Facebook, on with some of the more suicidal sociable interactions the site makes possible, can expose kids to much of questionable content if at that place aren't some restrictions in shoes.

Denise Dame Alice Ellen Terry, chief "Safety Mom" at paternal control site Safety Web agrees. "The whole compass point of COPPA is to protect kids and their privacy and kids have a appropriate to protection. On that point are things that Facebook can Doctor of Osteopathy to comply with COPPA." The simplest way that Facebook could become COPPA compliant would be simply adding roughly kind of maternal approval form for young children.

While Mrs. Lenhart said that the Church bench Research facility didn't take a specific sales booth along policy issues like COPPA she also aforesaid that kid's online lives need some nominal aegis as they learn how to communicate online. "There are predestined things we need to learn how to do but we have a licensing process for, comparable cars. You take over to be a certain age and a doomed level of maturity ahead we go out and let you operate that machinery."

Useful Alternatives for Kids

It's likely however that kids will use social networks one way or another. Recent studies have recommended that 5 million kids low-level the age of 10 whitethorn already represent using Facebook. "There's a reason on that point are already kids nether that age on the site" according to Mrs. Lenhart. Facebook "connect[s] kids to friends and family members they don't get to see."

There are alternatives to Facebook for young children. Dr. O'Keeffe suggests the place Togetherville. Togetherville is a social electronic network created specifically for children. Parents utilize their own Facebook accounts to help kids sign up for Togetherville and then parents and children can use the site together to introduce children to social networking in a safer environment.

There's also the possibility that Facebook itself could produce tools that would make IT more kid-friendly. Denise Terry says she thinks the site could make up a great way to teach kids how to utilization the Internet if Facebook added many robust maternal controls on with the previously mentioned parental commendation during sign-up.

At the minute though yet for parents looking to civilise their kids about the web IT's a hard line to find the best way to allow children learn about using the Internet without compromising the children's secrecy.