Thirteen is the minimum age for Facebook membership, but that doesn’t stop ‘tweens from signing on. According to The Daily Telegraph and FastCompany, Facebook removes 20,000 underage users per day.
The draw of Facebook for pre-teens is easy to understand in cultural context, especially considering trends among GenY parents posting information about their kids online from before they were born, and the fact that social networking is widely regarded as social glue with Facebook in particular as a key “social media lifeline,” not to mention trends in mobile youth connected-gadget ownership, and even the rise of Facebook use in K-12 classrooms. All things considered, it’s clear that Facebook is at the heart of digital pop culture and mainstream mediated communication.
Most media reportage of the trend in underage social networking focuses on risks, from cyber-bullying and stalking to identity theft, privacy violations and unwelcome disclosure of personal data. Surveys show that ‘tweens, teens, and twentysomethings are less aware and concerned about these risks than their parents, police, and professors are. Ideally, “every school would have some sort of approach to social networking use,” said researcher Michael Henderson, a senior lecturer in education at Monash University, “but what we are seeing is there is no concerted, clear effort across schools in this regard — partly because they don’t know how to approach these issues.
Should k-12 schools be responsible for teaching safe social and mobile networking practice? At the suggestion, pushback from my Twitter network of educators is instant. When I tweeted a survey that found 9 out of 10 parents think their kids should learn e-safety at school, my tweetstream was instantly flooded by complaints that parents expect teachers to do too much parenting already. And yet in the wake of cyberbullying tragedies such as happened at Rutgers University last fall, it is clear that young people must learn cybercitizenship long before they reach higher ed campuses.
