A recent survey shows that 52 per cent of children aged 11-12 in Ireland have their own profile on a social networking site, so how do you keep your child safe online, writes SHEILA WAYMAN
PARENTS ARE forever asking what age they should let their children walk to school alone, have a mobile phone, use make-up, go into town with friends or go to a disco.
A recent addition to this classic line of questioning is, what age do I let my child go on Facebook?
In theory, at least, there is a very clear minimum age: you have to be 13 to register with Facebook. The reality is very different.
When computer consultant Amanda Chambers went into a south Dublin primary school last month to talk to about 50 fifth and sixth class children about internet safety, the first question she asked was how many of them had Facebook profiles.
Some 35 hands went up, even though only about four of the children had reached the permissible age to sign up with the social networking site. The rest had passed themselves off as teenagers by lying about their date of birth – either with or without their parents’ blessing.
The underage use of social networking sites is a rapidly growing phenomenon, with which parents, educators and legislators are only starting to grapple.
Earlier this year, the EU Kids Online survey reported that 52 per cent of children aged 11-12 in Ireland had their own profiles on social networking sites – most probably Facebook, which is the hot choice at the moment. About 20 per cent of nine- to 10-year-olds also had one.
These numbers will have only gone up since that research was done, says Simon Grehan, internet safety awareness co-ordinator at the National Centre for Technology in Education (NCTE). Yet as long as the official stance is that only teenagers and adults use Facebook, issues to be considered concerning underage use, such as privacy, protocol, parental involvement and cyber-bullying will be ignored.
“There is systemic denial going on,” says Grehan, and that creates difficulties around giving internet talks in primary schools. Some parents believe that telling children under 13 how to use Facebook prudently is tantamount to promoting it.
The NCTE advocates that educational programmes on internet safety be developed for younger children and delivered in primary schools, instead of waiting until they are teenagers.
“A lot of the queries we got in the past around bullying and this sort of thing came from post-primary schools and now they are coming from primary schools,” he says. Through its Webwise initiative, it has created a Facebook page full of advice for parents.
Facebook has an age threshold because in the US, websites can only collect personal information from children under 13 if they have parental consent and complying with that legislation would be an administrative headache. Its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, has said he would like to create a safe and educational social networking environment for children under 13. The existing policy at Facebook is to delete the account of any user under that age, who is reported to it.
Here data protection legislation is less clear, with providers required to have “informed consent”, which minors can give themselves.
Facebook is more open than other social networking sites. Last month, the European Commission reported that only two social networking sites – Bebo and MySpace – have default settings to make minors’ profiles accessible only to their approved list of contacts.
The vice-president of the European Commission for the Digital Agenda, Neelie Kroes, says she would be urging social networking sites to revise their policies on default settings for minors.
“This is not only to protect minors from unwanted contacts but also to protect their online reputation. Youngsters do not fully understand the consequences of disclosing too much of their personal lives online.
“Education and parental guidance are necessary,” she adds, “but we need to back these up with protection until youngsters can make decisions based on full awareness of the consequences.”
Risks need to be kept in perspective and parents are divided between those who see Facebook as harmless fun and others who would have serious concerns about their children being on it.
Their main worries are that it can be a forum for inappropriate or bullying behaviour; that they might be “friended” by somebody they don’t know who then tries to meet up with them and that it would interfere with homework and other activities.
Grehan says he knows lots of people who would encourage their children to use Facebook to keep in touch with cousins. “On the other hand, I have heard stories where people’s daughters start trying to meet up with people they met online. They may not really be equipped to deal with it.”
There are a lot worse things on the internet than Facebook but children need guidance when they are starting out.
“A lot of the things we come across, that are easily avoided, happen in the first year of their use,” says Grehan. “They share things that are not appropriate to share because they are just learning their way around the site.”
It is usually photos that cause the problems. “Remember they all have cameras in their pockets – in their phones – which have direct links into the sites,” he says.
“It tends to be embarrassing stuff but can form part of bullying. Pictures are very difficult to destroy once they are loaded.”
Increasingly children are neither at home nor at school when they access the internet – 46 per cent of nine- to 16-year-olds in Ireland use their mobile phones to go online, which is significantly above the European average of 31 per cent.
The question of Facebook or no Facebook for, say, an 11-year-old, is a judgment call parents have to make for their own child. It is tricky, acknowledges Grehan, who does not let his 12-year-old son use it, primarily because it is a “time magnet”.
The age at which children start clamouring to go on Facebook depends on whether their particular circle of friends are on it, so underage use appears in clusters.
“If you were in one particular school there might be no fifth class in it and in another school they might be all on it. There is no point in being the only one in your class on it,” he points out.
Grehan urges parents to resist their child’s pleas as long as possible. However, you don’t want them to be doing it without your knowledge at a friend’s house either, which may happen if you keep giving a blank “no”.
The main thing is to be part of it, he advises, and be informed so you can negotiate boundaries and rules with your child. The NCTE works in conjunction with the National Parents Council Primary to run workshops in schools to help parents engage with their children’s online lives.
Parents who are familiar with Facebook can sit down with their children and introduce it on their terms, making sure the privacy settings on the child’s profile are customised to restrict access. It is generally parents who don’t use Facebook who are most alarmed by the idea of their children being on it.
As a computer training consultant and mother of three, Chambers saw the need to help parents inform themselves and has started giving talks in schools and offering one-on-one sessions. Initially it was to be general internet safety but she became aware that Facebook was such a big issue, she focuses on that.
Chambers is pragmatic about the fact that underage children are using Facebook. “It is not the site, it is the way it is used” that can be a problem.
Her main concern is that children are taught how to behave online and how to guard their personal information. Most settings for children should be “friends only” and other features, such as Suggest Photos of Me, should be disabled.
“I think the privacy thing is huge,” she says. It is privacy from the big companies, Google, Facebook and insurance companies, she is concerned about.
“We need to get into the mindset that the more information you give out, the bigger picture somebody can make of you – not necessarily for nasty reasons, maybe just for targeting you or, down the line, for insurance companies assessing risks.”
She finds children are reasonably savvy about Facebook. The younger ones are using it primarily to play games and to chat to their friends, rather than organising their social lives through it as older teenagers do.
Cyber bullying is a concern. “I think they can get sucked into a fight,” says Chambers. “It is very hard to ignore a comment on your page and everybody waiting to see what you are going to say back.”
She advises them to “hide” friends who they no longer want to communicate with online, as that is done without them knowing, rather than blocking them “which is a bit in your face” and could provoke a reaction.
The best way for parents to learn about Facebook is by setting up a page themselves. Chambers encourages them to do this with a few friends so they can see how the interaction works. “We are not going to fight this and if you want to be a good parent, you have to get involved.”
Ideally be a “friend” with your child and generally the younger ones don’t resist this. “I think you would have to agree some rules – like you would not post on your child’s wall. They would be mortified if you did.”
However, it is important to be aware that where a child “friends” adult relations, or an older sibling at college, this gives them access to material posted by those adults and possibly by less responsible adult friends of friends. So your child may see things you would rather they did not.
Parents looking at their children’s posts might be shocked by the bad language but it should not be taken literally. “There is a sort of a generation thing, it is not always as it seems,” says Chambers.
Children should also be encouraged to confide if they are uncomfortable about anything they have encountered online and be reassured about how a parent would handle it. Research consistently shows most children are reluctant to tell a parent about cyber bullying – and that response was borne out at the school Chambers last visited.
“I asked them why they would not tell parents. They all said ‘they would stop us using it’.”
For more information, see facebook.com/webwise. Amanda Chambers can be contacted through chamberslee.ie
“It is made out to be worse than it is. I monitor it and I have her password.”
Etain Wilson is determined not to let her oldest child, Cian (11), have a Facebook account for the time being but she did set him up with an e-mail address to keep in contact with friends who moved to the US.
He has been asking for a mobile phone but, as he goes into sixth class in Athenry, Co Galway, next September, she thinks they might get away with no Facebook for him for another year – although she does not think she will be 100 per cent comfortable about it even then.
“I have cousins on it – and two clicks, if they don’t mark it private, you are on to some random stranger’s page looking at their photos!”
Cian has mentioned Facebook once or twice but she has just told him you are not supposed to be on it until the age of 13, end of story.
Other parents living locally tend to be conservative, she says, and are holding off on e-mail addresses as well. “I would say if we lived in somewhere like Dublin it would be more of an issue. We are a little bit innocent and naive.”
Cian knows she is on Facebook, partly for her job as Galway co-ordinator for Mykidstime.ie, and also to keep in touch with family and friends. But since she stopped playing games on it, he shows little interest.
If he were to start using Facebook, she thinks it would spiral very quickly down to her two younger children, aged six and eight, which is another reason she wants him to stay away from it.
As an avid Facebook user, Ciara Hennigan had no major concerns about letting her daughter Ella create a Facebook account a year ago when she was 11.
“It is made out to be worse than it is,” she says. “I monitor it and I have her password.”
She talked to her daughter about internet safety and the one major rule is that she does not “friend” anyone she does not know.
Ciara sat down with Ella at home in Shankill, Co Dublin, when she was registering and made sure the privacy settings were activated for “friends only”. Subsequently, when Ciara noticed that a profile of one of Ella’s classmates was open to friends of friends, she had a word with the mother.
Initially, Ella wanted to go on Facebook to play games such as Farmville. And nearly all her friends in school – she has just finished fifth class – are also on it. Mainly they chat and post pictures.
“I would see the pictures she posts as I would be there when she’s doing it,” says Ciara, who regards Facebook as just another element of life and education for children today. She knows her daughter is well aware of issues such as cyber bullying and was pleased that she was able to come to her on an occasion when another young user – a nine-year-old – had posted unpleasant remarks about a child who was not on Facebook, so something could be done about it immediately.
Ciara tries to curb the time Ella spends on Facebook – although admits that as a frequent user herself, that’s “pretty hypocritical”.
“Remember they all have cameras in their pockets – in their phones – which have direct links into the sites. It tends to be embarrassing stuff but can form part of bullying. Pictures are very difficult to destroy once they are loaded