240 views - Under 13's using social media

EU Kids on-line published some research into social networking, age and privacy, one of the key items of the report was that younger children are more likely than older children to have their Facebook profiles set to 'public' these younger children are between the ages of 9-12.

From this, I can only assume that children are not aware that when you join Facebook, all information is made public, unless you go through settings, and even myself in my 20's have difficulty doing this, I had to get help to take photos put on Facebook by my friends off public viewing so what chance has a 9 year old, especially when according to this report half of parents do not put restrictions on their children using social networking sites (SNS), with Facebook being by far the only one, or most used SNS.

Even more worrying is whether this age group is even aware of the negative issues of using SNS, when do parent and/or teachers actually start educating the risks of these SNS sites, as noted in the research:

Given the possible risks, as well as the many

opportunities afforded by social networking, and since

much SNS usage occurs away from adult supervision,

children’s own digital skills are crucial. This includes

children’s ability to use the safety features embedded

in the sites, although their skills in this respect are

partly dependent on the usability of the features

themselves.

http://www2.lse.ac.uk/media@lse/research/EUKidsOnline/ShortSNS.pdf  thoughts and statistics produce by EUkids online research