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10 yr old SD want to be my facebook friend.

1K views 15 replies 16 participants last post by  myra_mcgray 
#1 · (Edited)
#5 ·
Accept her as a friend and change the privacy settings with regard to her so she can only see what you want her to see.

Bonus: Chances are that at age 10 she doesn't know that she can limit what YOU see, so you get a little peek at what she's doing on the internet
 
#9 ·
Yup, accept her. She'll see your profile pic and you'll see what she's up to, but limit her access from pretty much everything of yours (photos, wall, status). She'll just figure (as I assume my students do) that you're not very active on FB and don't post much. You know, old people.


ETA: Fyi, Facebook doesn't allow accounts for anyone under 13. Officially.
 
#11 ·
Privacy settings are your friend.

BUT, saying that, I'm not letting my 11yo on FB until he's legal. I'm concerned that if the worst happened and he ran into some difficulties (cyberbullying, grooming, whatever) that it's going to be harder to get help to resolve it.
 
#12 ·
My little sister thinks it's weird that people other than college students use Facebook. Those were the only ones it was available to, when it began. It just keeps expanding.

I let my 7th-grade twins get Facebook accounts because all their friends and family members had them and, so far, it's a nice way for them to stay connected with, say, members of their sports team after the season's over and their aunt and grandmother out-of-state. I have strict controls set, so only people I approve for them to be friends with can see their info. and all the e-mails from Facebook telling them about posts to their walls or responses to things they've written get forwarded to me. Also, even with family members, I only approve them "friending" adults if I'm able to scout out the person's wall (or I'm friends with them myself) and I know they stick to G-rated subjects (or at least PG!) As with everything on the computer, they're not allowed to have passwords I don't know.

Because the twins got accounts, my 10-year-old step-son (who lives with us) wanted one. Not many of his friends have accounts yet, but a few do and he also has FB friendships with adult relatives. At his age, he MUCH prefers exchanging little notes with them on FB than frequent phone conversations. The kids also like to play the silly Facebook games, like Farmville.

So I don't think it's necessarily inappropriate for your 10-y-o SD to have an account. And I think it's nice that she wants to befriend her step-mom. The issue is more that if you choose to post things on FB that you aren't comfortable with everyone you know reading, then you can't be FB friends with everyone in your real life. That shouldn't be too hard to explain to your SD: "The way you talk with your school friends is different than the way you talk with me. And of course some things I discuss with my adult friends are different than what I discuss with you. So until you're older, it would be more appropriate for me to limit my FB conversations to my adult friends. Thanks for inviting me, though!" If she complains that OTHER adults in her life are willing to befriend her (since there are plenty of us who limit ourselves to fairly benign comments on FB because it's so public), tell her the truth: some people don't discuss as much stuff on FB as you do. Whether it's OK for adult family members to FB-friend kids is different for each person.
 
#15 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by Fruitful4Him View Post
I may be stoopid (lol) but can anyways tell me how to restrict access?? I tried....but when I viewed the page as someone who had restricted access I was able to see all content...so obviously I am missing something...but I would really like to figure this out.

Me too. I was able to hide some info from my profile, and my current status. But not anything posted on my wall, including previous/old statuses.
 
#16 ·
I have heard of suggestions with pre-teens and social networking sites that if you are going to allow them to have the site you should set it up with them and the parent has the password but the child does not so that they know it is not a private space and so that the child has to ask permission to log on. Good luck
 
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