Should Facebook Support More Parental Involvement?
March 11th, 2008 | by jessestay |If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
The Washington Post had a very interesting article yesterday about how Children feel when their parents get involved on Facebook. Some children welcome and embrace the upcoming trend for the 25 and older crowd, while some still seem hesitant, not accepting their Parents’ friend requests.
In I’m On Facebook — Now What??? we mention one of the best way for a parent to get involved in their childrens’ lives is to follow their children as Friends on Facebook. However, I worry that with the current system Facebook has set up, parents can not get involved enough in what their children are doing and who they are interacting with. I’m going to get a lot of comments and e-mails on this one, but in the current system, there is absolutely no way for a parent to follow their under-age children without their children accepting their friend request. Sure - you can always ground them, discipline them or whatever your style of parenting allows, but there’s nothing stopping a child from using Facebook without your knowledge. All a parent can hope for right now is that their child will accept them and trust them to allow their friend request. As a parent myself this worries me.
Facebook could do a lot of parents a service right now by letting parents apply to follow their children and knowing of their children’s activity and interactions on Facebook without the children having to accept a friend request. Perhaps, even without their knowledge. Just like Windows and the internet, Facebook, which is quickly becoming the “browser” of the future, will need some parental controls as well if they are to continue to allow under-age children on their site.
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Tags: facebook and children, facebook filtering, facebook parents, parental filtering, parental filters
4 Responses to “Should Facebook Support More Parental Involvement?”
By mjh on Dec 17, 2008 | Reply
Right, but even more, if the child is savvy enough to learn the facebook privacy features, that child could easily put his/her parents into a friend group that doesn’t get all of the information.
I agree with you. Facebook needs to allow for parents to monitor their children w/out their children’s permission.
By KS on Jan 1, 2009 | Reply
I would want to monitor a young child when they first start until they learn my rules but 13 and up…no. My teens have good sense and good values so I don’t worry. Do you read diaries and listen in on phone calls? Surely,not! It’s the same thing.
By KS on Jan 1, 2009 | Reply
PS… “should FACEBOOK allow…” If a YOUNG child doesn’t allow a parent into a friend group that child loses computer access. The control has to be in the home.
By Michael on Jan 4, 2009 | Reply
If facebiik thinks breast feeding, a beautiful, natural part of life, is “Obscene” where do they get off talking about parenting at all.