My cousin’s 10 year-old daughter is on Facebook. Here are a few exeprts from her Profile…
Relationship Status: In a Relationship
Interested In: Men
Looking For: Friendship
Dating
I’ve seen updates from her page for her “Lover of the Day” and other stuff like that.
Her parents are imbiciles*, and I’m certain they are not monitoring her internet activity or otherwise teaching her safe computing habits. I just think Facebook is not a good place for a 10 year-old girl to be romping around unsupervised.
Is it me? I just turned 40, and even though I’m an IT Guy™ and pretty tech-savvy, I’m willing to accept that I’m just too old to really ‘get’ Facebook.
Thoughts?
*With a little encouragement, I’d be willing to regale you with a few stories about these two nitwits.
Facebook’s minimum age requirement is 13, actually, though they don’t really seem to monitor it actively as such. If you felt mean, you could report her to FB Administration.
As for factors other than age restrictions; yeah, I think a 10-year-old is a bit too young to be on FB. I’m not sure what a 10-year-old would get out of a social networking site except, I dunno, Farmville or something.
I agree that 10 years old is too young to be on facebook. First off, there are some games/applications that are explicit in nature or even suggestive in nature such as the “Lover of the Day.” Furthermore, since her parents are obviously not monitoring her internet access, it is extremely dangerous for her as there are many perverts out there who will try to take advantage of her through facebook. I feel that 13 is a good age to start using facebook, but depending on the maturity of a child that age is variable as well, to me at least.
There’s no definitive answer here. My kids are 11 and 12 and are on there. (And have been for a couple of years, at least.) I don’t see it as being a big deal. Of course we’re not nitwit parents as these folks apparently are.
Facebook can be a fun place for kids to hang out. I try to glance at their activity from time to time, but don’t intrusively monitor it. I’m “friends” with the 11 year old; the 12 year old wants nothing to do with me as a “friend.” She’s a good kid though, and we get along otherwise. I’m “friends” with a lot of her friends who have inexplicably invited me.
I don’t think it’s so much of a too young issue. You need to be involved with your kids, raise them properly and give them some trust and some freedom. I can’t imagine how I would have felt at 10 if all my friends shared this meeting place and I was told by my parents that I couldn’t join in. My parents trusted me at that age to be gone from the house for the entire day, and didn’t have a clue where I was, nor did they care or worry.
10 is too young, especially if the child’s activities are not monitored. Our kids are almost 12 and 11, and they are not on Facebook, and will not be until they are at least 13. And they have a requirement even then: mom and dad are to be their first friends. And I plan on monitoring their activites very closely until they reach an age that I feel I don’t have to do it any longer. That may be 15: it may be 30. We’ll see.
Her father, John, is an alcoholic deadbeat. He’s got a couple of disability claims that he thinks will pay off, so he won’t work. My cousin (the wife/mom) was running a hair salon for a while, and he used it as his personal piggy bank and bankrupted it in less than two years. He bought a brand new heavy duty pickup truck with a plow (it probably cost +/- $40K), drove it for a couple months, and decided it wasn’t good enough, so went out and traded it on a bigger and mroe expensive plow truck. Both were financed. I can only imagine how much money he lost in the deals, what with instant depreciation of new vehicles and the exorbitant cost of the trucks. Whatever. He also bought himself a Chevy Corvette convertable. I think the best year the Salon had was around $150K before expenses, salaries, overhead, etc. He’d just go in there and take money out of the register, or go to the bank and withdraw thousands of dollars.
He’s cheated on my cousin at least a couple times that I know of. Probably many, many more.
He has a mullet.
His typical attire is sneakers, sweat pants and a white wife beater t shirt.
He came over to my house one time a few years ago, looked around, and said “I always thought you’d do better than this.” And commented on my recent layoff. I had found a job before my layoff became effective, but that fact escaped him. I live in a modest home that’s within my means, that cost $140,000 more than his house, and my wife doesn’t work. These facts also escaped him.
He once engaged my father-in-law in a discussion about “the pizza business”. My father-in-law was a Senior VP of Operations at a well-known pizza chain resteraunt before his death. He was hugely successful. Deadbeat John made and delivered pizzas for a local pizza place. He offered my father-in-law advice about how to run the resteraunt.
He lost his house to foreclosure. Then got evicted from the apartment to which they fled for non-payment. He’s ‘borrowed’ a few thousand dollars from my mother to keep the family afloat financially.
He bought a trailer and a bunch of landscaping equipment on credit, then sold it all without paying for it.
He was ‘co-owner’ of a tanning salon at which there was a huge scandal: There were peep-holes in the walls of the changing rooms and tanning bed rooms. Place got closed down.
He tells everyone (i.e. his wife, her mom, my mom, etc.) that the reason he goes to strip clubs is because the women there don’t throw themselves at him like women do everywhere else.
For me, 10 would be too young. Mine is 9 and I have forbidden it “until I change my mind.” I have a friend whose daughter (10) is on there but the mother is her friend and goes through it regularly to clean up friends and emails. She is very strict about who her daughter has contact with but the relationship is one where I do believe her daughter would tell her if someone she didn’t know contacted her.
I guess it depends on the kid, same as it does for lots of thing. My son is simply not mature enough to handle it. I think he would be easily tricked by a stranger or at the very least spend even more time in front of a screen than he already does.
Any age would be too young if her parents are just throwing her to the lions without monitoring her. My 11 year old has had an account for about a year; the deal is, I have her password, but I won’t use it unless she gives me a reason to (or my fish need to be resurrected on Fish World). I’ve also set it up so anything that gets posted on her wall, or sent to her as a message, automatically forwards to my email. She’s not allowed to friend anyone she doesn’t actually know in real life, and among her friends are her older brother, aunts, uncles, and grandparents, all of whom keep an eye on her doings as well as I do.
So far it’s working out; she’s a pretty level-headed kid, I’m keeping my fingers crossed she stays that way through the teenage years.
6th grade. That’s when kids actually start caring about what their friends think of them. That’s when they start real-life social networking. Before that, there’s no reason to take the risk and let them sign up.
My wife and I let our nine year old daughter on facebook so that she could play FarmVille and Pet Society with us. She is now playing Island Paradise and My Town, too.
Her friends are all close relatives or close family friends.
I actually find the games we play on facebook to be better for her than some of the stuff on Nickelodeon. Nick is nothing but a bunch of really aggressive marketing for its shows and its advertisers’ products.
The ads on facebook are much more along the lines of “Earn a college degree online,” while Nick’s are all “Find i-Carly toys in your Happy Meal!!!”
13 is definitely too young. What age depends on their individual maturity level but generally I’d say probably around 15-16. Just from thinking back on how I was in my teen years and whether someone at that stage should frequent a website with the kind of privacy/safety concerns that these social sites have anymore.
[Old Lady Voice]When I was their age we didn’t have no fancy shmancy Facebook. shakes cane[/OLV] Sorry, couldn’t resist.
30, really? Once they’re 18 it’s their life to do with as they please… goodness, if my parents were that overbearing I’d unfriend them for sure.
And the hits just keep on coming. I am so sorry for this kid. She clearly needs much more parenting and supervision than she’s getting, or is likely to get. She can easily, if she hasn’t already, find a man who’s willing to be her lover.
Hell, Daddy isn’t mature enough to be let out on his own. And I don’t know why Mommy puts up with him.
