Parents keep an eye on their children on Facebook

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By Aude Brun (545)

“Parents keep an eye on their children on Facebook”

• Summary
Facebook is a website with a social network to rather close or unknown people. Originally, it was Harvard’s social network then, other American universities used it. Since 2006, everyone can use this social website. In July 2008, Facebook had more than 90 millions of members of all around the world. It’s the 8th website most visited in the world.

It seems to be a good thing to communicate with friends in this way… But an investigation reveals that children who use this kind of websites are unconscious. Indeed, they don’t pay attention to the conditions of utilization and they give pieces of information about their private life. Even if this website is forbidden for children who are less then 13 years old, in United-Kingdom, 750 000 children between 8 and 12 use Facebook and give to others, private informations such as address, cell phone number, their school’s name.. A quarter of them have in their contacts some people they’ve never known… However, 75% of the parents would keep an eye to their children on Facebook secretly.

Do we inform the youth about the web’s dangers?

• My opinion
I think we have to inform children about some dangers of the Internet. First, never give personal informations such as address, last name, cell phone number... Second, parents have to watch their children, they have to know what their children do on the computer.

I have a Facebook, I gave my last name but that’s all. All of my contacts are people I know. And if someone is looking for me and he’s not in my contacts, he can’t my profile.

I have another experience: my sister who’s 15 years old, went on some blogs and put some comments. She didn’t even know these persons, and she related to them her life. These persons had some big problems, my sister had small problems, but after that, she thought she had big problems. She didn’t want to communicate with us (her family). So, my parents decided to install parental control on the computer. No, she’s really good and she talks to us.