Underage Children and Social Networking

Despite minimum age requirements for joining popular social networking services such as Facebook, many students misrepresent their real ages and join as active participants in the networks. This descriptive study examines the use of social networking services (SNSs) by children under the age of 13. The researchers surveyed a sample of 199 students, ages 7–12, to determine how active they were within social networking services and how knowledgeable they were about their personal safety and the potential for harmful interactions the services might cause them. The study concluded that students begin to join social networking services as early as age 9. Although their parents are generally aware of their participation and children generally have an open communication with them about their activities, there appears to be a general lack of training and information about such skills as creating privacy settings and assessing safety risks. This early student engagement with social networking strongly suggests that training pre-service teachers about online safety awareness should be more widespread.