"Kids on FB: Why everyone including Facebook is missing the point"

Is it possible to have more security on Facebook for say younger children if they are allowed to join?

Facebook has found itself at the centre of a new controvery, as confusion reigns over whether the site plans to allow 13 year-olds to join the social network.

The story first appeared in the Sunday Times where Facebook’s head of policy in the UK, Simon Milner, was quoted as saying that Facebook was actively considering changing its policy. Milner said: “A lot of parents are happy their kids are on Facebook. We would like to hear from people what the answer might be.”

Facebook however denied the report, saying it had no such plans of letting those under 13 years of age join the website. In a comment to the Telegraph, a Facebook spokesperson said,“We have no idea how The Sunday Times concluded that we are opening up to under-13s from the conversation Simon Milner had with them. All we have said is what we have been saying for months – that minors on Facebook and the internet is an important issue – and we want to work with the broader industry to look at ways of keeping minors safe.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been in favour of getting younger and younger kids onto Facebook. He was quoted by Fortune, last year, as saying, “My philosophy is that for education you need to start at a really, really young age. We’d take a lot of precautions to make sure that the under-13s are safe.”

Facebook has over 900 million users and while letting children under the age of 13 could boost its numbers, the concerns of children’s safety online remain paramount. These include not just cyber-bullying, but child pornography, and trolling which are especially serious if they don’t have an adequate understanding of online dangers.

But will banning children from logging on to the site, solve the problem?

In this digital age, children have been literally born with the Internet. They are digital natives in ways which the rest of us can never be. It is not only an imperative experience, it is a large part of their reality. Social media is an integral part of interacting – not just online, but also off it. A party is not a party until the photos have been shared on Facebook.

And age restrictions can and will be circumvented by children, who are mostly smart enough to just enter an alternate birthdate so that they are allowed to enter the site.

Perhaps it’s time the debate shifted from whether or not social media should be withheld from young children, to accepting that many of them are on it and deciding what needs to be done to keep them safe.

But is it possible to give younger children more security on Facebook? The answer is yes. Additional safety measures for children on Facebook can always be put in place. But concerns of privacy have always plagued Facebook. Even adults often regret what they end up posting on the site.

How to bypass these concerns, while allowing children the freedom to interact online, is the real question that needs to be answered.