By KARIN DELL'ANTONIA
Facebook really is after your kids.
Right now, the site doesn’t officially allow children under 13 to sign up. But in this Sunday’s Times Magazine, Emily Bazelon reports that Facebook isn’t happy about it. It has tripled its spending on lobbying and formed a political action committee in anticipation of “a fight we take on at some point” — in the words of Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder — over the 1998 Children’s Online Privacy Act.
Summed up, Facebook’s argument is that millions of children (7.5 million 12 and under, according to the May issue of Consumer Reports) are already on Facebook. Letting them sign up legally (under their real ages, which now they have to hide) would allow Facebook to develop stricter privacy controls for that age group. But, Ms. Bazelon writes, stricter privacy controls aren’t in Facebook’s economic interest.
None of my kids are on Facebook, but I find I’m not that bothered by the idea. I have one Facebook “friend” under 12 (a friend of my son’s). I accepted her “friend request” (as did her mother) because I’m hoping that by the time she and my son are 16, she will have forgotten I’m there. I buy Facebook’s argument, although I’m not sure I trust the company to implement it. I think children would be safer on Facebook if they were allowed there, with limits.
But my sense is that most parents aren’t thrilled with the idea. Should I think more about privacy and bullying and less about what I suspect is the inevitable migration of children online? What, if anything, would you do to monitor your kids if they did join Facebook?
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