Parents Making Pages or Putting Unprotected Pictures of Their Children on Social Media Outlets? Uhhh.

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BACKGROUND INFO :

Did you know that people under the age of thirteen are prohibited from having a Facebook account? So how many people do you know created pages for their children that either their children run or they run? Heck, even babies have their own Facebook accounts, as shown above.

(those are some pretty damn smart babies)

Here are some facts from this website:

• "Of the 20 million minors who actively used Facebook in the past year, 7.5 million—or more than one-third—were younger than 13 and not supposed to be able to use the site.

• Among young users, more than 5 million were 10 and under, and their accounts were largely unsupervised by their parents.
• One million children were harassed, threatened, or subjected to other forms of cyberbullying on the site in the past year

So why is this acceptable?

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JESSICA SAYS :

I do not have children, however, I have a number of both friends on Facebook and in R/L who have children and their profile pictures are sometimes just a picture of their child. You tend to see this more in my generation who have children, as social media has been a large part of our lives. (remember those Myspace and Xanga days? Or how about MyLife, Blogster, or Friendster? There are so many more, too.)

My opinion is to not have your profile picture set as just your child, at least include yourself. A professor and I actually spoke of this one day while talking about our Facebook friends and we both feel that your profile picture should be something of you, not just your kid/kids. It was actually a very funny conversation. I generally try to keep my profile pictures as "shadowed" as possible because I don't really need people looking at a picture of me, but to have a picture of your kid there seems kind of wrong, especially since everyone can see a profile picture, regardless of privacy settings. I have no problem with those who have albums on their accounts of their children, that's totally cool (though I think one should have privacy settings on their albums so creepers can't get access to photos of their children). But I definitely have a problem with people who make Facebook (or whatever) accounts of their infants/toddlers/children. I mean, I'd be pretty pissed if in 10 years or more (ha yeah like there won't be a new media outlet) I looked at posts my parents posted when I was 2 and they exclaimed triumph of not falling out of my new bed or something, though I never typed that when I was 2. Talk about setting your kids up for hating you. They'll do that anyway at some point, so I'd suggest to wait until they're old enough to use a social media outlet responsibly. 

But hey, who am I to suggest this stuff, huh? I don't have children.

So here's a legit recommendation from this website:

"For Parents:

If your preteenager uses Facebook, delete the account or ask Facebook to by using its "report an underage child" form. For children 13 and older, monitor activities by joining their circle of Facebook friends. If that's not feasible with an older teenager, keep tabs on them through their friends or siblings, as did 18 percent of parents we surveyed who had 13- to 17-year-olds on Facebook.

Get to know the technology. "Use Facebook yourself, so you're savvy about the privacy issues," says Denise Terry, chief "safety mom" at SafetyWeb, an Internet-monitoring service for parents."

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TO THE READERS:

• What do you think of the fact that parents are allowing their children (or are unaware) to use social media like Facebook?
• If you have a child currently, do you allow them to have a Facebook/whatever else account?
• What do you think of parents making pages for their infants?