By Bill Pytlovany
The first time I saw my 12 year old grand daughter on Facebook I wasn’t really concerned until I saw that her birthday implied that she was 18 years old. Thankfully, she wasn’t trying to misrepresent herself. She just knew that Facebook users under 18 have a different experience. It turns out correcting her birth year back to 1996 was a safer experience.
I was actually surprised to see that Facebook took any steps to protect the privacy of 13 to 17 year old kids. Do you think it’s enough? You can guess my answer would be NO! My grand daughter is now legitimately a Facebook member at 13 years old but was still encouraged to access the applications like “Lover of the Day”.
I can’t deny kids and many adults think sharing their private information is the closest thing to becoming a reality TV star. It’s like we’re raising the Share-It-All Generation. Unfortunately, Facebook shares most of this information with companies who have no physical address or stated privacy policy.
This post is excerpted with Bill’s permission from his blog
