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Why Parents Help Children Violate Facebook’s 13+ Rule

41 points by sathishmanohar 15y ago

Me1000 15y ago
The flaws of the law are more basic than anything mentioned. How exactly do people expect companies to enforce it? The most you can do is add a couple fields for the user to entire their birthday. The article states 'These findings prompted outrage back in May as politicians blamed Facebook for failing to curb underage usage.' … brilliant. The implication is that Facebook is required to collect data on < 13 year old children in order to determine their real age, only to realize that they've already violated the law.
brc 15y ago
Some of my friends have setup facebook pages for their < 5 year old kids and regularly post pics and comments to their kids profile pages. I'm not sure why they have done this, it's not like you need to reserve their name or anything. It's all a bit creepy if you ask me.
grannyg00se 15y ago
This is a blog post summing up a research paper. The paper concludes: "Instead of providing more tools to help parents and their children make informed choices, industry responses to COPPA have neglected parental preferences and have altogether restricted what is available for children to access. As a result, many parents now knowingly allow or assist their children in circumventing age restrictions on general–purpose sites through lying. By creating this environment, COPPA inadvertently hampers the very population it seeks to assist and forces parents and children to forgo COPPA’s protection and take greater risks in order to get access to the educational and communication sites they want to be part of their online experiences."
- delinka 15y ago
  It's always been about reducing corporate liability in the name of Protecting the Children rather than actually protecting the children. No surprises here.
  - brador 15y ago
    More like the vocal few setting the rules for the silent majority.
fleitz 15y ago
Why not just put in place decent privacy laws for everyone? Something like PIPEDA would be a huge step forward for privacy in the US.
- dennisgorelik 15y ago
  Why not just dump all such laws that restrict freedom of expression and refocus government on what it is designed for: providing infrastructure for the society (building roads, fraud prevention etc.)?
  - MostAwesomeDude 15y ago
    COPPA isn't designed to forbid freedom of expression; it was intended to protect children from advertisers and data miners. Google not being allowed to register accounts for kids without a big wall of legal documents from their parents is exactly what this was intended to do. This is a rare case of the system working.
    - dennisgorelik 15y ago
      When kids have problems creating Google/Facebook accounts - that restricts kids' freedom of expression. Regarding "protecting from advertisers" - do you want government to protect you from advertisers?
      - MostAwesomeDude 15y ago
        Every other week there's a new explosion of stories about Google or Facebook or some other advertiser invading user privacy in some new and interestingly not-illegal way. People have been clamoring for rules which force advertisers and other data gatherers to not be so evil. COPPA is one such rule. I don't really care, personally, but this is about more than just me.
fragsworth 15y ago
At some point in their lives kids have to learn that certain rules are safe to ignore. I see no significant problems here. Worst case some kids get their accounts disabled.
- nimblegorilla 15y ago
  The saddest part of that article were the first 3 comments. Three parent being proud of the "teachable moment" where they taught their 12 year olds to follow the terms of service and not get accounts until turning 13. I'm not a parent, but I think it's more important that kids are taught how to protect their online privacy rather than acting like sheep and letting them loose at an arbitrary age.
davidjhall 15y ago
As father of a 12 year old, the parent has to be a gauge of their maturity level -- I think she's too young for facebook and can wait a year (maybe longer.) I do have issue with email --- she's more than old enough to write/receive email and there's a 13 year old restriction on Gmail (and, subsequently, Khan's Academy!) I think that's ridiculous and had to have the talk about "what rules are safe to ignore."
- alttag 15y ago
  I concur. My (younger-than-13) children have Gmail accounts (which they don't have the passwords for), partly for use with Khan Academy. With the OS X parental filters, my kids know that mom gets a copy of every email sent to them. When they're 13, we'll relax those restrictions. As for Facebook? Not happening until they have a better grasp of the consequences of publicly sharing information ... which may not occur until well after 13. The Internet doesn't forget. I'd like to not allow my kids to learn that the hard way too early in their lives.
- sp332 15y ago
  she's more than old enough to write/receive email Really? I'm a 25-year-old guy and some of the spam I get curls my toes.
  - kellishaver 15y ago
    I recently set up an email account for my daughter, who is 9, so she could use it to email friends and family (we have family that lives several thousand miles away). When she wants to check it, the rule is we check it first. She doesn't even know the password at the moment. I don't read her private emails from her friends - I think even a 9yr old deserves some privacy and she's a responsible kid, but I do go through and delete spam (which she only gets very rarely since she's not allowed to sign up for things without permission and can only give it to friends at school). That way I can also make sure she's not getting email from MrCreepy47 or something. The main thing, though, is that when we go through it, we talk about it. "This is spam. They're probably just trying to sell you junk and a lot of it isn't appropriate for kids. If you get email from someone you don't know, right now you should just delete it and not even look at it. If something doesn't seem right, tell us so we can look into it." The Internet is a big place that can be dangerous for kids and I think they need some measure of protection, but I also think they need controlled exposure to it so they can be taught how to deal with it - even, and perhaps especially, the bad stuff. Her email is (her nickname)@(her name.com) which she thinks is awesome, so I'm hopeful that by setting it up early and keeping an open dialog about its usage,it will prevent the sneaking around to do things behind our back in the teen years - or at least keep her safer when she does. She's a great kid and generally very responsible, but I'm under no delusions that she's perfect or that she won't make a bad judgement call at some point. I'm just trying to give her the tools and skills to minimize that.
Newgy 15y ago
This article completely ignores one of the central reasons for COPPA-- to protect children from personally targeted corporate marketing/ad sales.
- alttag 15y ago
  ... and also from the consequences of early stupid decisions. We're entering an era when all of our actions will be stored on the Internet. Give kids some time to screw things up in a more risk-free way before setting them loose in a world of cloud servers that record everything.
dennisgorelik 15y ago
It's a good illustration of unintended consequences of "safety laws". Children suffer the most from COPPA.
michael_dorfman 15y ago
My eldest daughter spent the night before her 13th birthday in front of the computer, with the Facebook registration information filled out, waiting with her finger poised above the Enter key for the stroke of midnight. Yeah, I'm a hard-ass.
- thirdhaf 15y ago
  You let your thirteen-year old stay up until midnight for a Facebook registration? That sounds less like a hard-ass and more like an eccentric :-)
  - michael_dorfman 15y ago
    Guilty as charged.
- wnight 15y ago
  Why? If she was ready before then, why would you keep her off, and if she wasn't ready, why would you interpret that law as requiring you to let her have an account? All you'll train into her will be a desire to do anything forbidden. Watch out for drinking unless you introduce it in moderation.
  - michael_dorfman 15y ago
    The Facebook terms of service say that you need to be 13, so I stuck to that. I don't think this is encouraging anyone to desire forbidden things; she desired Facebook because she thought it would be fun, and had to wait because those were the rules. On the contrary, I don't think it's a good idea to teach 13-year-olds that the rules don't apply to them just because they want something.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
parasitius 15y ago
If that scum bag Clinton wanted to protect kids, he should have prevented the GOVERNMENT from knowing anything about kids under age 13, not companies. What malice will a company do with your kids name? Show your BOY a targeted GI Joe ad instead of one for Malibu Barbie? And the government?? Use your imagination... PLENTY
absconditus 15y ago
Why do you all seem to want your children to use Facebook so badly?
Cadsby 15y ago
In the same way that people tend to overestimate their own abilities (e.g. everyone thinks they're a great driver and it's everyone else that's a hazard on the road), I think most parents vastly overestimate their children's maturity and decision making capabilities. I'm not sure why parents are so keen to run out and let their kid's create their own Facebook account either. Everyone in my child's life is within proximity to his physical space, i.e., family and friends at school, etc. When he wants to say hi to grandma we jump on skype or video via gchat.

The flaws of the law are more basic than anything mentioned. How exactly do people expect companies to enforce it? The most you can do is add a couple fields for the user to entire their birthday. The article states 'These findings prompted outrage back in May as politicians blamed Facebook for failing to curb underage usage.' … brilliant. The implication is that Facebook is required to collect data on < 13 year old children in order to determine their real age, only to realize that they've already violated the law.

brc 15y ago

Some of my friends have setup facebook pages for their < 5 year old kids and regularly post pics and comments to their kids profile pages. I'm not sure why they have done this, it's not like you need to reserve their name or anything. It's all a bit creepy if you ask me.

grannyg00se 15y ago

This is a blog post summing up a research paper. The paper concludes: "Instead of providing more tools to help parents and their children make informed choices, industry responses to COPPA have neglected parental preferences and have altogether restricted what is available for children to access. As a result, many parents now knowingly allow or assist their children in circumventing age restrictions on general–purpose sites through lying. By creating this environment, COPPA inadvertently hampers the very population it seeks to assist and forces parents and children to forgo COPPA’s protection and take greater risks in order to get access to the educational and communication sites they want to be part of their online experiences."

delinka 15y ago
It's always been about reducing corporate liability in the name of Protecting the Children rather than actually protecting the children. No surprises here.
- brador 15y ago
  More like the vocal few setting the rules for the silent majority.

fleitz 15y ago

Why not just put in place decent privacy laws for everyone? Something like PIPEDA would be a huge step forward for privacy in the US.

dennisgorelik 15y ago
Why not just dump all such laws that restrict freedom of expression and refocus government on what it is designed for: providing infrastructure for the society (building roads, fraud prevention etc.)?
- MostAwesomeDude 15y ago
  COPPA isn't designed to forbid freedom of expression; it was intended to protect children from advertisers and data miners. Google not being allowed to register accounts for kids without a big wall of legal documents from their parents is exactly what this was intended to do. This is a rare case of the system working.
  - dennisgorelik 15y ago
    When kids have problems creating Google/Facebook accounts - that restricts kids' freedom of expression. Regarding "protecting from advertisers" - do you want government to protect you from advertisers?
    - MostAwesomeDude 15y ago
      Every other week there's a new explosion of stories about Google or Facebook or some other advertiser invading user privacy in some new and interestingly not-illegal way. People have been clamoring for rules which force advertisers and other data gatherers to not be so evil. COPPA is one such rule. I don't really care, personally, but this is about more than just me.

fragsworth 15y ago

At some point in their lives kids have to learn that certain rules are safe to ignore. I see no significant problems here. Worst case some kids get their accounts disabled.

nimblegorilla 15y ago
The saddest part of that article were the first 3 comments. Three parent being proud of the "teachable moment" where they taught their 12 year olds to follow the terms of service and not get accounts until turning 13. I'm not a parent, but I think it's more important that kids are taught how to protect their online privacy rather than acting like sheep and letting them loose at an arbitrary age.

davidjhall 15y ago

As father of a 12 year old, the parent has to be a gauge of their maturity level -- I think she's too young for facebook and can wait a year (maybe longer.) I do have issue with email --- she's more than old enough to write/receive email and there's a 13 year old restriction on Gmail (and, subsequently, Khan's Academy!) I think that's ridiculous and had to have the talk about "what rules are safe to ignore."

alttag 15y ago
I concur. My (younger-than-13) children have Gmail accounts (which they don't have the passwords for), partly for use with Khan Academy. With the OS X parental filters, my kids know that mom gets a copy of every email sent to them. When they're 13, we'll relax those restrictions. As for Facebook? Not happening until they have a better grasp of the consequences of publicly sharing information ... which may not occur until well after 13. The Internet doesn't forget. I'd like to not allow my kids to learn that the hard way too early in their lives.
sp332 15y ago
she's more than old enough to write/receive email Really? I'm a 25-year-old guy and some of the spam I get curls my toes.
- kellishaver 15y ago
  I recently set up an email account for my daughter, who is 9, so she could use it to email friends and family (we have family that lives several thousand miles away). When she wants to check it, the rule is we check it first. She doesn't even know the password at the moment. I don't read her private emails from her friends - I think even a 9yr old deserves some privacy and she's a responsible kid, but I do go through and delete spam (which she only gets very rarely since she's not allowed to sign up for things without permission and can only give it to friends at school). That way I can also make sure she's not getting email from MrCreepy47 or something. The main thing, though, is that when we go through it, we talk about it. "This is spam. They're probably just trying to sell you junk and a lot of it isn't appropriate for kids. If you get email from someone you don't know, right now you should just delete it and not even look at it. If something doesn't seem right, tell us so we can look into it." The Internet is a big place that can be dangerous for kids and I think they need some measure of protection, but I also think they need controlled exposure to it so they can be taught how to deal with it - even, and perhaps especially, the bad stuff. Her email is (her nickname)@(her name.com) which she thinks is awesome, so I'm hopeful that by setting it up early and keeping an open dialog about its usage,it will prevent the sneaking around to do things behind our back in the teen years - or at least keep her safer when she does. She's a great kid and generally very responsible, but I'm under no delusions that she's perfect or that she won't make a bad judgement call at some point. I'm just trying to give her the tools and skills to minimize that.

Newgy 15y ago

This article completely ignores one of the central reasons for COPPA-- to protect children from personally targeted corporate marketing/ad sales.

alttag 15y ago
... and also from the consequences of early stupid decisions. We're entering an era when all of our actions will be stored on the Internet. Give kids some time to screw things up in a more risk-free way before setting them loose in a world of cloud servers that record everything.

dennisgorelik 15y ago

It's a good illustration of unintended consequences of "safety laws". Children suffer the most from COPPA.

michael_dorfman 15y ago

My eldest daughter spent the night before her 13th birthday in front of the computer, with the Facebook registration information filled out, waiting with her finger poised above the Enter key for the stroke of midnight. Yeah, I'm a hard-ass.

thirdhaf 15y ago
You let your thirteen-year old stay up until midnight for a Facebook registration? That sounds less like a hard-ass and more like an eccentric :-)
- michael_dorfman 15y ago
  Guilty as charged.
wnight 15y ago
Why? If she was ready before then, why would you keep her off, and if she wasn't ready, why would you interpret that law as requiring you to let her have an account? All you'll train into her will be a desire to do anything forbidden. Watch out for drinking unless you introduce it in moderation.
- michael_dorfman 15y ago
  The Facebook terms of service say that you need to be 13, so I stuck to that. I don't think this is encouraging anyone to desire forbidden things; she desired Facebook because she thought it would be fun, and had to wait because those were the rules. On the contrary, I don't think it's a good idea to teach 13-year-olds that the rules don't apply to them just because they want something.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

parasitius 15y ago

If that scum bag Clinton wanted to protect kids, he should have prevented the GOVERNMENT from knowing anything about kids under age 13, not companies. What malice will a company do with your kids name? Show your BOY a targeted GI Joe ad instead of one for Malibu Barbie? And the government?? Use your imagination... PLENTY

absconditus 15y ago

Why do you all seem to want your children to use Facebook so badly?

Cadsby 15y ago

In the same way that people tend to overestimate their own abilities (e.g. everyone thinks they're a great driver and it's everyone else that's a hazard on the road), I think most parents vastly overestimate their children's maturity and decision making capabilities. I'm not sure why parents are so keen to run out and let their kid's create their own Facebook account either. Everyone in my child's life is within proximity to his physical space, i.e., family and friends at school, etc. When he wants to say hi to grandma we jump on skype or video via gchat.