Facebook: When Is The Right Age For My Child To Join?

In theory, children are not allowed to sign up to Facebook until they are 13, but in practice many children do so under fake ages or names.

At this age, you should treat the subject with caution (rather than banning them outright) and ask advice from school or from other parents.

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Teach children skills of social sites

Staying up to speed with individual social apps isn’t as important as “getting” the whole idea, says Robert Hadfield of Britain’s Get Safe Online. By the time a child is old enough for Facebook they should already be up to speed with how to act online.

Parents should teach children the skills they need on a safer social network. There are various ones aimed at children, such as Habbo Hotel. “To begin with it helps to monitor accounts, but on Facebook the best solution is to talk and be ‘friends’ if you are both willing.”

Hadfield says children need to learn key skills and what ‘meeting’ online means. “When you talk to someone on the internet, it’s the same as going out with them on the street.”

“Parents need to give children basic skills such as how to control who sees what post, what tagging is and how to use it, plus how to delete posts they don’t like. For many, keeping up to speed is challenging. I use an iPhone, and make sure I learn how to use the app.”

Facebook’s privacy menus are complex, but you CAN take control: you can delete posts from years ago and even delete an entire account permanently. A Yahoo guide is here.

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Dangers are ‘exaggerated’

Parents are often misled into believing that sexual predators are more common than they are. In fact, the risks are statistically very small.

“These reports are often distorted”, Hadfield says, and mobile phone networks use filters to protect against people trading adult content.

 “You’ll hear reports about what today’s buzz app is,” Hadfield says. “Snapchat, Whatsapp, whatever. Facebook is for old people now. But the issues are the same even if you are using something old-school like email.”

“The key is to talk,” says Hadfield, describing it as “the one thing that works universally.”

The ideal scenario is to learn together. Show your child how to keep their Facebook account private and explain that everything online is permanent, and can be seen by people years later.

Children are new to this world and you can offer help

You can tip them off to the fact that social games, and constant demands for magic crystals from friends will NOT make you popular or that fake Facebook ‘news’ stories about Justin Bieber being swallowed by a python are usually scams designed to make you answer surveys and give criminals your email and password.

“If you monitor what children do online,” Hadfield says, “They will find ways round it or go and do it at a friend’s house where their parents don’t mind. It all comes back to education and teaching children that strangers can be dangerous, just as we were taught at school.”