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Do you let your kids have Facebook accounts?

2K views 30 replies 16 participants last post by  chickabiddy 
#1 ·
Another question.

My daughter is only 11 but her friend is moving and her friend's parents suggested they both get Facebook accounts so they can keep in touch. 11 sounds young to me. I thought Facebook had a rule you had to be 13 or so? But then my daughter says she does have some friends with Facebook accounts already.

Do your kids have Facebook accounts, and how old are they? How old do you think is old enough, or is it a "never" thing for you?
 
#27 ·
My 17yo has had an account since he was around 14. He rarely uses it. They mostly communicate be email or text.

My daughter is only 9. I don't believe I will let her have a FB account early (but I could change my mind on that sometime in the next 4 years). She has only recently started communicating with friends through email and "texting". She doesn't have a phone but does have an iPad and can use iMessage to send texts when she has wifi access. Her friends also do this with their iPads or iPods. They have also discovered FaceTime, although at this point most of those conversations consist entirely of how cool it is that they are FaceTiming.

She attends a parochial school in a different town and her friends come from several different towns, so they don't live close enough to just get together all the time. This allows them to stay in touch.

If she wants to talk to one friend or even a few at a time, she can do it with email or text, not FB. She knows the age rules and understands that. She also knows the rules for Internet use in our house. I don't check what they're doing all the time but they know that I can and would see if she tried to do it behind my back. I know they can delete histories, but I can also tell when that has been done and that would mean a loss of Internet privileges.

I want my daughter to learn to respect rules, even if she doesn't agree with them all the time. And I also think its not a bad thing for kids to have to wait for some things. They can have something to look forward to and appreciate it more when they get it.
 
#28 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by MichelleZB View Post

You know, the kids could just exchange email addresses and write. It's not fraud to have an email address when you're 11; it is fraud to have a Facebook account. If the goal is just staying in touch, why not just do the email thing and keep it simple?
Fraud is legally lying or deceiving for financial gain. She wouldn't be financially benefiting, so I can see "lying" but not "fraud." I would not be OK with her lying in order to profit, but I am OK with lying about her age on Facebook.

I find that keeping in touch on Facebook works better for me with friends who have moved away, or friends I've moved away from, and therefore I think it would work better for her too. I can't always think of something to send an email about, but I can comment during the day on what I'm up and comment on what my friends are up to easily. I feel more connected to them through Facebook than through email.
 
#29 ·
And I am OK with lying in some circumstances. I remember when I was a teenager and started to feel unsafe telling people my parents were expecting me home at, say 10, when they weren't really expecting me until midnight. That's one example but there are times where lying makes sense and I don't plan to teach that lying is wrong in every case. I think you have to look deeper than the surface to see what's right and what's wrong.
 
#30 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by chickabiddy View Post

Mom doesn't say "no" to Facebook for 11yos. Facebook says "no" to Facebook for 11yos. Mom says "no" to lying.

FTR, I'd probably let my 11yo have a Facebook account if it was allowed. I won't let her lie. That's a value I feel pretty strongly about.
I can see why you feel that way, and I do think that it is a solid argument against letting an 11 year old old have a Facebook Account.

I don't see it as lying because no sentient being knows or cares what is entered in that field. It's just a computer loop that checks for a value, and has been programed to accept certain values but not others. No human being on the whole planet actually cares, so to me, that isn't lying. There needs to be someone of the receiving end for it to be a lie. I don't feel that providing a computer loop with an acceptable value is lying.

However, I can see how some else could see this differently and feel that a lie is a lie whether or not it is told to anyone.

This definitely isn't a cause of "fraud." Fraud has a very specific meaning, and this doesn't qualify.

Like Meemee, I don't teach that lying is never wrong.

I believe that complete honest is a very high value, even a spiritual practice. "Ruthless honesty" is part of AA, and non-lying is the second yama. Complete honesty is very difficult, comes at a cost, and is something I respect. I also think it is very, very rare. The first yama is non-violence. Most people think that non-violence and non-lying are easy, but Gandi said once that the he never got past the first 2 yamas to work on the later ones -- that truly living these principles was all he could do. I have talked to my children about these values, but I don't require they practice them to fullest. To me, that is too much to require of another human being.

So yes, I can see someone who practices "ruthless honesty" as part of their own personal growth not allowing Facebook until the 13th birthday. I do think that if someone disallows it based on this, but their child sees them lying about ANYTHING, the child will not learn the value. Our kids learn more about values from what we do than from what we require from them.
 
#31 ·
I posted this in the spinoff thread, but I do concede there are rare occasions when lying is the less-bad of several choices.

I understand the value of a Facebook account. As I wrote, I'd probably let my kid have one if it was allowed.

I also understand the argument that it's not really a lie because no human sees the data. I don't agree that makes it less of a lie, however. We'll have to agree to disagree about that.

I guess the two things I want my daughter to take from our discussions (and coincidentally, she just asked about Facebook today because a few of her friends have accounts) are: (1) it's not okay to lie for personal gain and (2) even if we don't agree with a business's practices we don't cheat, we just don't do business there.

I do feel strongly about this for my daughter. I feel far less strongly about other kids. It's not really my business what arrangements other families make, and I'm not terribly interested in being Facebook police.
 
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