If you want to really put a dent in your kid’s ability to use social networking site, simply get dial up for him/her. Oh it won’t stop them from using them but these sites are painfully slow in dial up and no fun to use.
Of course dial up still is great for text only sites like Wikipedia, which the kid may need for school.
I think a parent has a right to monitor/control their child’s activities and I doubt the kid would be scarred for life by not having a social networking site.
The question I wonder about is, if you did delete the account won’t she simply make a new one and hide it from you?
Isn’t it better to at least know the one she is using now? Kind of like the devil you do know versus the devil you don’t know.
The thing to always make sure your kid really understands is that other sites scrape pages off the web and your information can be around for years and years after the original account is gone.
I do understand a parent’s concern as kids talk and I mean they talk a lot. I can’t tell you the things I’ve been told by kids and teens, and obviously they don’t understand the concept of “don’t air your dirty laundry in public.”
Venturing slightly out of GQ territory – because I don’t think this is a good way to keep your daughter safe – I can’t help but wonder if removing her account would simply breed animosity in her. Your reasoning is basically “I can’t be bothered to learn how this works, so I’m going to take the easy route and just prohibit it altogether”? :dubious:
As others have pointed out, it sounds like a backfire waiting to happen. Instead of learning trust and effective discretion, all she’ll learn is that the parents are technophobes who are afraid of things they don’t understand. One day soon she’ll make the call herself: “I think this is safe and I know better than Mom and Dad and they won’t know if I do it anyway”. It’s certainly your decision to make, but remember that you’re working against massive social forces and once you cross a certain line, it’s likely that you’ll be seen as old-fashioned and irrelevant and she’ll simply succumb to (the seemingly more reasonable) forces of culture and peer pressure.
IOW, you can forbid her this one time, but you can’t get rid of all the technology and socialization in her life. The more you shelter her, ironically, the more vulnerable she will be… why not teach her about the dangers and how to deal with them, instead?
This, I don’t get. You’ve been at gatherings where two or more people you know are talking to each other and you’re listening, right? That’s all it is; this is why it’s social networking. Facebook is a giant conversation among people who know each other to varying degrees, which is open so that additional parties who know them to even different degrees can join in. Presumably, anyone you friend on Facebook is someone you don’t mind joining in; you ignore them or limit their access if you do mind.
Your daughter is quickly going to hate you if you terminate her access to Facebook; it’s pretty much supplanted any other form of communication for the under 35 crowd. Your best bet is to create your own account, tell her she has to full-access friend you, and not friend anybody she doesn’t actually know, is creepy, or has a stealth account. Then you can keep an eye on what’s happening in her life without alienating her.
I’m wondering if kaylasdad99 doesn’t understand that Facebook, unlike, say Myspace, can restrict access to that person’s account, to people specifically invited to that account. There would be nothing to stop you from opening your own account and monitoring her friends list and profile - and vetoing those friends you deem unsuitable.
My dad has a Facebook account, and I asked him what he used it for the other day. He replied “to spy on my kids”. I’m 42.
Does the OP have the login information for his daughter/s Facebook account? I haven’t seen any indication that he has her password, so how would he delete an account he can’t access? Even if he does have access to this profile, how will he stop his daughter from setting up a new one with account info he doesn’t know? From a practical standpoint, I’m not sure if what the OP is asking is even possible.
Make sure you know the different ways to get rid of the account:
Deactivated – The account is just turned off, but all information remains. Anyone who had her listed as a friend will no longer see her in the list. If she ever reactivates the account, all the original information is restored.
Deleted – The account is removed from the facebook servers and cannot be recovered.
Yep, and that’s likely what she’ll do, even if she has to sign up for a different free email account. I totally understand the parenting side of the issue, but kids are going to be kids and with them being more technically proficient than their parents on average, the best you can usually hope for is to make sure they’re using sites like Facebook responsibly by setting up privacy controls and going over the ground rules.
And 13 is the minimum age limit for kids signing up for sites like Facebook and Myspace due to COPPA restrictions, so clearly at least some governing body deemed 13 an age where kids are responsible enough to sign up for sites without parental discretion.
But there’s a lot you can do to make it much harder. Do you have a router at home? Many routers allow you to list blocked sites. Do you have a web firewall on your computer? There are many free ones like K9. They will prevent the computer from visiting sites you don’t want. If nothing else, you can prevent it from happening within your own home.
However, it might not be in the child’s best interest to completely block them from these applications. Many of their friends will be using them and your child will be left on the outside from the rest of the kids. So it may be better to allow them to use these sites with the provision that it’s done with full transparency. That is, you have all accounts and logins and are free to log in at any time. Then you can work with your child on what is acceptible.
Theoretically possible, but do you really want to pit a parent who doesn’t even understand Facebook against a learning, innovating child who grew up with this stuff and will become more and more immersed in it every day? Sounds like a technological arms race waiting to happen, and I know who I’d bet on.
If the daughter’s a nice kid who listens to her parents, this won’t be a problem… but if that’s the case, filtering would be unnecessary in the first place. Why not just talk to her? Draconian measures only work if you can actually establish control, something that’s not easily done with technology you’re not familiar with. A parent who chooses that method may be buying little more than a false sense of security while at the same time leaving the child open to dangers she might otherwise have learned about and been prepared for.
It took me about ten minutes tops to learn how Facebook’s privacy settings work, and to set my profile to my paranoid security needs. You can’t even find my Facebook profile via Google at this point. ‘Friends of friends’ can’t see diddley-squat on my profile.
I will grant you that it should be that way by default, instead of wide open to the damn world. And if you have photos of your kids on there, I’d lock them down on photo privacy settings… which Facebook made annoyingly separate from other privacy settings.
I would say yes, absolutely. With kids in the house, if he doesn’t understand how to filter the internet, he should either not have internet or make damn sure the kids can’t use the computer. If he doesn’t understand it, he needs to figure it out.
I was shocked when I walked in on my 9-year-old daughter and her friend looking up sex videos. I would have never in a million years thought she would have done that. We have a good relationship and talk all the time. Not only was she looking up videos, she was being deceptive about it. And it’s not like I don’t know how to filter the internet. I just didn’t have any idea I’d need to do it so soon.
So let this be a warning to all parents out there. Either learn how to filter access or get rid of the internet. Without it, it’s just a matter of time before your kid crosses the line.
Well, that’s exactly what I’m getting at. Your daughter is interested enough in sex videos to lie about it, and you think filtering is going to stop her? :dubious: Delay and annoy, certainly, but the cat’s outta the bag now and she’s going to be curious no matter how much filtering you use. All you’ve managed to do, IMO, is buy yourself a temporary victory while forcing her to be sneakier in the future. Do you really think she’ll stop looking for proxies, or going to friends’ houses, or sneaking glances at porno mags or otherwise put a hold on her curiosity (or horniness, or whatever it is that drives her) on account of your filtering software?
Filtering is a band-aid that just tackles the symptoms. Sex and pornography exist and will become more and more accessible to younger and younger kids unless you’re Amish or something. I don’t really understand how continuing to hide the real world from her helps her, especially since she’s already seeking it out on her own… except now when she does it, she’ll do it without your guidance and input because she’ll have to do it hidden from your view.
ETA: It isn’t just about porn, but about the availability of information and media in general. The sooner she learns to be a critical consumer of this junk, the better. What would you rather she learn? Good judgment and self-protection or fear of authority and effective circumvention?
So what are you saying? Let her look at sex videos as much as she wants?
Filtering will stop it from happening in our house. I’m not foolish enough to think she’s never going to look for that stuff again, but I can prevent it from happening in our house. Here’s the rules we enacted:
Installed web filter on computer
Moved computer to public area
Can’t be on the computer unless we are in the room
No computer use when a friend is over
All computers have login passwords
And if she ever tried to get around the rules, I would have no problem taking away all computer privileges, or even disconnecting the internet. Kids should not have any sort of expectation of computer privacy.
The only good thing is that it brought up the opportunity to talk to her about the dangers on the internet. I knew we’d have to do that, I just thought it would be much later.
You never looked at a dirty magazine when you were a kid? :dubious: I know I did! I understand the cautious approach because of potential dangers, but killing natural curiosity with an approach that’s not even going to work in the first place seems counter intuitive. There are thousands of proxy sites out there that let you get around any internet filter. And given how technically savvy today’s kids are it wouldn’t surprise me that they would either know about it, or someone else would sooner or later tell them about it. Even a simple Google search would prove helpful to most kids.
I grew up around the time the internet became popular and my parents never put a filter on or monitored my internet access, and I turned out just fine (better than most kids if I don’t mind building up my ego a bit). Don’t always assume an unfiltered internet is going to make them perverted criminals, but *do *go over safe internet practices such as informing them of the bad people who ARE online and how to never give them personal information or pictures. A filter is only going to deepen their curiosity by making the content that unattainable, magical fruit dangling in the tree. Kinda like why so many kids get denied alcohol and then end up becoming binge drinkers in high school and college.
My parents both worked for a major airline. That being the case, we took family vacations in Honolulu/Waikiki (and other islands) 2 or 3 times a year starting when I was about 3. By the time I was 12, I knew my way around Waikiki almost as well as my own neighborhood.
The airline in question had a contracted hotel in the heart of Waikiki where they had all the rooms, meaning that the only guests were employees on layovers or the vacationing families of employees.
My mom knew the crew working the outbound and inbound flights as well as the staff and such at the hotel, so a room was arranged for us and my brother and I went. We hung out on the beach, had breakfast each morning at a Dennys-like local place that was popular there, saw a couple movies at the cinema. Nobody really though it was a big deal in 1984 among the airline industry crowd.
OK, back to the OP and her confusion as to what Facebook does.
On facebook you post what you’re doing or thinking. That’s your status. It’s usually inane stuff (examples of my friend’s current status: “I got a flu shot”… “great weather - I love Kentucky!” “My [son/daughter] is doing [cute thing]”) Whenever you change your status, it propogates your changes out to the people designated as “friends.” You can post a picture or a link in your status if you like, and there’s a separate place to store photos. People can comment on your status but the ability to get a conversation going is very limited.
There is no “conversation” between people. It’s just a flow of one off remarks from everyone you have friended, with occasional commentary. People check it to see if anything is happening, not to engage in deep thoughts. If your definition of an acceptable internet activity is one in which two and only two people have an pointed exchange on a particular subject, then Facebook will not and cannot be that.