The Facebook Fallacy

and Ruth Malhotra

7.5 million Facebook users are under 13. Are any of them your kids?  Why you should quit being a wimp and deactivate those accounts!

One afternoon, my phone buzzed.

“It says that Maggie asked you to be her friend on Facebook,” my daughter read off the screen.  Her eyes were wide, waiting to see what I’d say.  Camille, only 12, had told me about her friends’ online social media accounts which violate Facebook’s age restrictions.  But isn’t asking your friends’ mom to be your friend pretty brazen?

According to a new Consumer Reports study, 7.5 million Facebook users are under the age of the 13 and over 5 million Facebook users are 10 and younger. 

“I think it’s odd that she’d ask me,” I asked.  “Isn’t she afraid that her mother will find out?”

“Mom,” she said, “most of their parents know!”

Another study about the same topic confirmed that it’s not just the kids who are cheating the system. Liberty Mutual’s Responsibility Project surveyed 1,000 adults and found that the number of parents in the U.S. who would allow children 10-12 years old to have a Facebook or MySpace account has doubled in a year. Seventeen percent of U.S. parents questioned in the poll said they had no problem with a pre-teen child using a social media site (compared to just eight percent a year ago), and 11 percent of parents admitted to using social media sites on behalf of a young child or infant.   

Are parents wrong to help their kids cheat the system by lying about their age online to sign up, or should parents be the ones to determine when their child is old enough to create a profile? It’s an issue many parents of preteens continue to wrestle with. “Exerting parental rights is wise and good, but organizations such as Facebook have the right to expect consumers to comply with their rules,” said SixSeeds contributor Jill Joiner. “When half the 5th graders in my son’s class have Facebook pages, it is a topic that is definitely on my mind.”

“Despite Facebook’s age requirements, many kids are using the site who shouldn’t be,” says Jeff Fox, Technology Editor for Consumer Reports, “What’s even more troubling was the finding from our survey that indicated that majority of parents of kids 10 and under seemed largely unconcerned by their children’s use of the site.”

However, this new laxity is damaging to both kids and parents for three reasons:

1.    Age Deception is a Bad Precedent

Okay, so maybe that header should be that lying in general is a bad idea.  But allowing your kid to lie about their age is simply a bad precedent because society has so many age-specific restrictions.   For example, would you allow your kids to lie about their ages at a restaurant to get a cheaper meal?  Or, should they consider it perfectly acceptable to lie at an amusement park so they can get cheaper price of admission?  How about getting a fake I.D. when they’re 19 so they can attend parties in clubs that only allow those over age 21?  (And, by the way, moms… this applies to you too!  We know you aren’t twenty-nine anymore!  Embrace it, baby!)

2. The “Everyone’s Doing It” Argument

Kids haven’t gotten more creative since we were playing with Rubik’s Cubes, but the “everyone’s doing it” plea apparently has finally begun to wear down parental defenses.  In fact, that’s the most common refrain that kids use on their moms and dads when they ask for the Facebook accounts.   However, parents need to eat some spinach, take a deep breath, and take a cue from Nancy Reagan: Just say no!  

You can’t be so afraid of the anger, resentment, or disappointment of your children that you let them make bad decisions that could affect the rest of their life.  Or even decisions that seem innocuous at the time.  If we as parents collectively decide that if “everybody else is doing it,” our kids probably won’t be doing it, then we could get rid of underage Facebook usage and other cultural ills as Silly Bandz, shorts with words on the butt, and Bratz dolls.

3.    You’re Breaking the Parental Code

When some parents allow their kids to join Facebook, it puts the rest of us in a bind.  Not only do we look impossibly uncool, how on earth are we supposed to respond to your kids’ Facebook requests?  After all, we like your kids, we think they are cute, and we might even want to know how “OMG” they felt about their sixth grade math test.  However, accepting their friend requests and participating in that aspect of their lives pulls everyone down into the morass of relative morality.

So what did I do?  That day, I ignored Maggie’s request. Facebook has a way to report an account registered for an underage child, which causes them to promptly delete the account. However, I don’t have the heart to do that to someone else’s kid!  Was I somehow complicit by not reporting her account?

I decided that I didn’t have to be the Facebook police.  But, a couple months later, she asked me again.  That’s when I decided to just be honest with her.  

“Dear Maggie, I think you’re great and I want to know more about what’s going on in your life!  But I can’t ‘friend’ you without looking like a hypocrite to Camille who’s not allowed to have an account yet.  I hope you understand.”

Maggie never wrote back and I’m not sure how she felt about my response.   However, no matter how uncool we are, parents need to grapple with this issue in a more serious way.  What do SixSeeds readers think about this issue? Am I overreacting?  Is it less serious than I’m making it out to be, or a slippery slope we shouldn’t ignore?  

We posed this question our SixSeeds Facebook page and realized that parents seemed to have consensus:  

Pamela Meeks Kuester:
As a parent of children 17, 15, 13, 10, and 7 years old, I think this is awful! My children have each seen their 13th birthday as a rite of passage into FB, and we have a parent/child discussion as to whether we think (or they think) they are ready for the responsibilities involved in having an FB account. I think, like PG-13 movies and getting "big boy cups" at restaurants (instead of the kiddie cups which usually come with crayons and a color-me menu), this should be a privilege earned with age.

Suzanne Davis Ezell:  
If you let your child have a Facebook account before they are 13, you are telling them that it is okay to lie.

Jennifer Carawan Creviston:  
Sad... really. But I do understand why they do it. My daughter is 8 and wants a FB page. There is too much drama as an adult with Facebook, that I cannot imagine what an 8-year-old’s FB account would look like. My daughter’s English teacher started a blog for the class and the kids are so mean and talking off topic to each other on there, that she turned it off.

Rosemary Keane:
My oldest daughter got her FB page on her 13th birthday and not a day sooner, despite the mild begging. I won't set an example that it's okay to lie about her age anywhere. I believe strongly in setting a precedent for future behavior. Her 10-year-old sister knows that she also has to wait, and they are all learning that integrity is more important than being "in" with what other kids are doing. Rules are rules in my book!  

Carmen Hyde:
Our oldest child got his page at 13. The next one in line will be 13 in December, but I'm not sure she'll be ready by then so we may have to hold off. We need to see some maturity and responsibility before handing them over to FB-world.

Jennifer Lovmo:
We didn't allow our 14-year-old to have a Facebook account until she was around 13.5.  Not only was it about following the rules, but we also wanted to make sure she was responsible enough. If that didn't happen until 15, so be it, but so far, she's proven to be responsible with it.

The Inspired Housewife:
I made my daughter wait because I thought lying for her was sending her the wrong message… but it was hard because "everyone" was doing it.

Lauren Majesty-Randall:
This is another example of parents choosing short-term ease over long-term parenting. Nothing new there... why parents who set up their kids at 8 to act like they are 15 are surprised when their 15-year-olds try to act like they are 22 is completely beyond me. It seems obvious!  

Kate Freeburn:  
My kids are not allowed their own Facebook page (11,9,7), but I do allow them to play some of the games on my Facebook account with strict rules applying (not allowed to be on chat, not allowed to message anyone, not allowed to add people, only games I say are ok, and time limit on how long to play). When my older daughter broke a rule, she was banned from playing for a week and learned to abide my rules and is great now. I found that there has to be boundaries, and if one of her friends is playing games on their mother’s account she must ask my permission and get permission to talk to them.  

What do you think?  Feel free to leave us a comment below or on Facebook.  (And if you’re a kid who wants to disagree, then just use big words so we won’t know you’re under thirteen!)