By now you know that Facebook is considering allowing kids under 13 onto the site.
Sure, there’s talk of mandatory parental supervision and speculation that the under 13 section will be ad free, but let’s get real here; this is Facebook were talking about.
The social media phenomenon currently states that users must be 13 years or older; yet a recent Microsoft study published in AdAge estimates that more than 7.5 million underaged kids are already on Facebook, and a huge chunk of them got there with their parents’ help. Parents, who are virtually clueless about the ever-changing privacy setting rules, not to mention the frightening ramifications associated with kids posting random photos and updates on a site that has bazillions of active users.
Never underestimate the power of Facebook photos.
Just ask the 17-year-old girl in Australia whose mother’s home was invaded last week by a pair of burly burglars after they spied a picture of money the teen posted on Facebook.
According to news reports, the teenage girl was helping her grandma count some cash and decided to snap a photo of the loot. A few hours later, the girl uploaded an image of her grandmother’s personal savings on her Facebook page, and lo and behold, that night a couple of masked bandits broke into the teen’s mother’s house demanding the pile of cash they saw on Facebook.
The girl’s mother told the robbers that she was clueless about the photo her daughter had posted on Facebook. The stunned mom went on to tell the crooks that her daughter no longer lived in the house, but the men ransacked the place anyway. Police say the burglars got away with an unspecified amount of the mom’s cash and some of her personal items. Fortunately, the men didn’t injure the woman in the process.
As for the teen, who didn’t think twice about posting a wad of cash on her Facebook page, she told reporters that she could have never dreamed that doing so would result in a burglary.
Really?
Police say the identities of the robbery suspects are unknown.
Really?
Have they gone through the girl’s Facebook friends’ list?
Personally, I think Facebook should worry less about linking underage kids’ accounts directly to their parents, and instead, mandate that 15, 16, and 17-year-old’s actions on the social networking site be monitored by mom and dad.
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