7.5 million Facebook users are under 13

BANGALORE, INDIA: Facebook has become the integral part of the modern-day life, irrespective of their age. But this popularity has led to some disturbing realities with regards to children, says the State of the Net survey by Consumer Reports.

One of the major findings is that nearly 7.5 million of the 20 million minors who used Facebook in the past year were younger than 13, and not supposed to be able to use the site. Of them, nearly a million were bullied, harassed or threatened on the site, the study said.

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Also, more than five million of the Facebook users were 10 years old or younger. The study said that it would leave them vulnerable to threats ranging from malware to identity theft to sexual predators.

18 p.c of parents monitor children by adding them as FB friend

Facebook screens applicants by asking for their birth date and rejecting those too young. Because joining doesn't require a credit card, though, a pre-teenager can slip through by falsifying his or her birth date, said the study.

It also said that parents of kids 10 and younger on Facebook seem to be largely unconcerned. Only 18 per cent made their child a Facebook friend, which is the best way to monitor the child.

By comparison, 62 per cent of parents of 13- to 14-year-olds did so. Only 10 per cent of parents of kids 10 and under had frank talks about appropriate online behavior and threats.

Though parents of young children might think they are less likely to take risks, or download pornography, the study says young children “need protection from other hazards that might lurk on the Internet, such as links that infect their computer with malware and invitations from strangers, not to mention bullies”.

“It's like an alarm clock goes off for parents when their kids turn 13," says Vanessa Van Petten, creator of Radical Parenting, a blog featuring writing by teenagers that aims to improve family relationships. "Parents think their younger kids aren't interested in porn. With a 10-year-old mentality, they're only interested in 10-year-old things."

5 mn US households exposed to abuse via Facebook

The study also pointed out that more than five million US households have been exposed in the past year to "some type of abuse" via Facebook, including virus infections, identity theft and bullying, said the study, for which 2,089 US households were interviewed earlier this year.

Citing the observation of Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which was made to the US Congress last year, the study said there's concern that Facebook and other social networks manipulate privacy policies and settings to confuse users, extract more personal information from them, and transfer the information to application developers and websites.

He urged that such data-collection practices be regulated for 13- to 18-year-olds "who have no protection under COPPA and who cannot easily follow all the changes taking place in this self-regulatory environment."

Facebook should beef up screening : Study

The study suggested that if your pre-teenager uses Facebook, delete the account or ask Facebook to delete it by using its "report an underage child" form.

It also said Facebook should beef up its screening to drastically reduce the number of underage members and make its privacy controls even more accessible.