Considering he only wants to play games, and seemed willing to “friend” you, I think you did the right thing.
I think the only thing you did wrong was not discussing the issue with your wife before deciding what was to be done. It just seems like something that should be talked about, because I can definitely see where she’s coming from.
But, I think you did the right thing. Essentially, you rewarded him for coming to you and telling the truth. I see no harm in a 9yo being on facebook, TOS notwithstanding. He sounds like a great kid, congratulations.
What’s interesting about this issue, is that if you punish him for lying to facebook, you’re necessarily punishing him for coming to you and telling you the truth. Personally, I’d rather my kid be honest with me than stick to the letter of TOS agreements.
If your son would keep an account secret from you, what is to prevent him from setting privacy settings so that you don’t see anything?
Isn’t his password what you really want ?
My 10yo has asked to get a FB account, and I’ve said no, because she isn’t 13. So there’s my opinion for you.
I believe it’s fairly evident when people do that. I’d notice.
Yes, and I have it.
Why is it evident? I thought you could set the privacy on each and every matter posted. He would only need block the ones he doesn’t want you to see.
Not saying your kid is like that, but in general it might be good for parents to realize that and its implications.
Not a parent so I’m sure you can just ignore this and mock me behind my back later…
I like the way you handled this. I absolutely agree that even the smartest, sweetest, most honest kids will go behind your back at some point to do something bad (raises hand) just because they really think it’s ok and the parents are stupid. So going with the Facebook account is cool.
I do agree that it sends mixed messages about rules and breaking the TOS but, it was either that or have him sneaking around.
One way you could have handled it is by saying “You’re not 13 so you can’t have an account, but I am over 13 so I can set up an account for me - with my name and my email and my password - and you can use it to log in and play your games.” That way you’ve skirted the TOS issue, no one’s broken any rules, and the kid gets to play games while you watch.
I’m starting to think no good can come of Facebook. If he plays those games associated with it all I can say is I hope you have good virus protection. Every other day one (or more!)of my FB friends has one of those stupid spamming messages hitting their accounts and all their friends’ accounts.
Sorry I left out where I should have said I liked your solution. I’ve trusted my daughter with the computer since she was around 10. Eleven years and she hasn’t let me down yet.
I think your solution was a good one, given the circumstances.
I have several under-13 relatives and children of friends as FB friends, at their parents’ suggestion. These are parents who have chosen a couple of safe adults to help them keep an eye out what goes on. The kids tend not to get too wild, knowing their great aunt, grandmother or mom’s friend gets their feed. 
I think you did fine, and it sounds like you have a great kid. FB for a 9 year old needs to be monitored every time before he logs out just to keep an eye on it though. My only real worry would be if other school mates have profiles there’s a window open for bullying down the road, and you’ll want to know about that right away if it happens.
You might want to debrief a bit and remind him that next time you’ll need him to come to you first, rather than after the fact.
Also maybe a super secret mom/dad hand signal that means hold up mr. we need to discuss this before you resolve it without my input.
**Maggenkid **(almost 12) is not allowed a FB account. She has created her own accounts on several kid based boards and hasn’t run into any issues. I do random checks on posts and the PC is in the living room. Like you boy, she knows the rules about private info not going on the web. The kids’ sites are heavily moderated.
One of her (same age) friends has been on FB for a year and it’s been used as another route for bullying. Poor kid went through some tough times and FB made that public.
You’ll likely find that his older friends will not keep in touch once they’re all in different schools. Even my best mate (still friends, mid 40’s) and I took a long break over the conflicting school years.
Your kid, your call.
I thought you were talking about global privacy settings (which I think would be evident when I clicked on his name - I’d not be able to see certain classes of things).
But yes, I guess he could be hiding individual posts from me, and I’d never see them unless I logged in as him. That’s an acceptable level of required trust, in my judgment.
This solution might work for some of the non-social games, but at that age, having to use an account set up in a parents name could be regarded as uncool in ways that might attract bullying. Not that your suggestion is automatically a bad idea - it’s just that the prevailing situation is often a can of worms
Very good point…
…and a fine idea. I shall have to discuss super secret signal with Mrs. Apollyon.
I honestly was/am asking for input. 
True. My only objection to this option is that it says that sharing accounts / sharing passwords (assuming I won’t necessarily be present to log him in) is an OK thing to do… and I consider this worse that breaking TOS. Now I’ll freely admit I might be weird in that; I suspect being an IT professional is the reason.
Yeah, I only have an account at all because it was a networking tool back when I was made redundant from a job 2 years back; I’ve barely used it since.
Good point. I’ll re-check the scanners and make sure they’re running regularly.
Hee hee hee hee I’m in the corner giggling at the overreactions.
Your son sounds a lot like me - he voluntarily confessed and felt guilt, which means he’s pretty good with you.
I’d just tell him only play the Facebook games, don’t download anything, and he can only friend people you know personally (so only real life friends you know). Log in to his account yourself every couple of weeks just to check what’s going on behind the scenes, but I doubt he wants to change his privacy settings, he just wants to play games with his friends.
If my parents had any idea what I got into online they’d have a fit. Then again, if I was doing things at home, it meant I wasn’t out somewhere getting drunk! 
I say let the kid have a facebook account. He confessed he did it without permission, which is a good sign. I’d make sure that you had the password to it and monitored it. It’s better that he has an account you know about than if you forbade it and he created a secret one.
As usual the Family Circus has already cover this
Ditto with the poster who recommended good virus protection. My daughter plays a lot of FB games and has had to get her computer cleaned by the college IT geeks twice since September – and she has virus protection!
My rules were that they had to friend not only me, but all their aunts and uncles and grandparents. Let me tell you, you can immediately tell which kids have free reign and which do not.
I don’t think anyone over 9 should have Facebook.
I assumed this was pretty generally enforced.