Children and Facebook

The Facebook epidemic has permeated our homes like the stupid MySpace fad and MSN chatting. It is funny when you do some surveys and they ask you how many hours do you spend on the computer/internet: 0 – 3 hours a day, 3 – 6 hours a day, 6 or more. I just laugh… 0 – 3, 3 – 6? Who the hell wrote those stupid surveys. Be realistic for goodness sake. The average time that people spend on the internet is 9 hours a day, and 8 hours of those 9 are on facebook! The rest of their waking hours they spend it in the bathroom or eating or watching TV.

I am a victim of facebook. I had it for over 2 years now when it was still fresh and new. However, I use it as pure entertainment and a place to post my pics and music. That’s it. I added a few people I know and found some old school mates. Also the groups are great. I love the group feature, it’s like having multiple forums or discussion boards that you can easily have access to with one login name. I am very opinionated and I like sharing my two cents in such groups. So that’s the primary intention of Facebook. A social network within your network of friends. Your network being your University, or work, and you can only sign up with the organization’s email address and be confirmed. Somehow that all changed due to the costs to maintain such sites. Not enough people joining that will cover Facebook employee’s salary. They get their money from the ridiculous advertising on the side and on the bottom of the screen if you have not noticed. Especially that annoying smiley advertising where your mouse goes over it by mistake, and when you have headphones on, the shock of hearing a freak talking is fucking annoying! Yes I swore cause I don’t like forced advertisement or annoying sounds when I am browsing any website!

So the advertisement needed more people and more clicks, but how to get more people? The clever minds of the marketing team decided that Facebook is too limited. The networks are too limiting and biased to the rest of the world, or even the universe and the stars above! Wasn’t the purpose of Facebook to be a social network within a certain organization or University?

The Facebook team said, “no, we have to open it up. We are not as popular as MySpace because not everyone can join!”

Facebook was then opened to the world like a mall on the day before Christmas. Everyone rushed to join, and if you were not a member, then you are ridiculed and made fun of. Also if you just met a person then the first thing you ask them, “Do you have a Facebook account? No? Common join and add me!” No need to ask for phone numbers or msn emails anymore. Facebook is the fad now a days, and if you are not on it, then you are not “part of the crowd!”

Ok, fine, everyone is on it, however, the problem with facebook is the age limit. It says now, to sign up to Facebook, you must verify that you are 18 or older, or part of a high school network. So now you must have a high school email which most high schools now provide to their students. Hmm, that’s fine. A high school network is ok I guess. Not a big deal, but the over 18 age verification? Not a smart idea. So what do kids do? Sign up claiming they are born 1989 or before. They are old enough to do math and count backwards. That’s not brain science!

So you got a bunch of kids floating around in facebook. Some as young as 8 or 9 years old. My sister is one of them, but she is almost 12. I warned her numerous times about this. I asked her “how did you sign up?” She said, “I put your birth year, 1980 but my birthday month and day. So technically I am older than you now! ” (laughing and her tongue sticking out literately) She is born in August, and I am December!

I said, “ok fine, you can join facebook, but I warn you about it. And if I see you doing anything stupid I will disconnect your internet, and I don’t care if you tell dad and mom and cry about it. I will tell them the truth and see how much trouble you will get your self into!”

So she promised me but I kept my eyes open.

She keeps adding her self to numerous groups, making up her own groups, adding her friends and even fake celebrity profiles to just see pics of them and she knows they are fake but fun to have as a friend. (Kids what can you do?) So I tolerated. Almost every day she talks to me about Facebook, it seems to amuse kids quite a bit. Especially with all it’s kid like applications that they added as a feature the past 3 or 4 months. It seems to draw the kid crowd eh?

Today however, she comes up to me and says, “oh my God! Do you know who I found on Facebook?” I said “who?” She said, “XXXXX name, the daughter of our gym instructor!” I said, “ok”. I was curious to see my self. So I searched for her name. She said, “no no, search within this high school network!” I said, “huh ok”. I said,”No girl. She doesn’t go to this school, she would go to the same school as her older brother!”

So I searched more and I saw a fake profile. (yes fake, I can tell!) I was like who the hell wrote this, that’s not her? And why are you the only person that posted on her wall, and she is not 12 years old as was written in the fake About Me section! My sister just closed my screen real quick and said “forget it!” I screamed and said, “how dare you close my browser!” So she left. I waited a couple of minutes and I searched for that person’s name again, and it was gone from the search results.

I messaged my sister on MSN. (Yes it is sad that we talk to each other within the same house on MSN.) And I told her, “so you decided to delete that fake profile you made! I swear to God, if you do anything else stupid with Facebook and people seeing your name associated with it I will disconnect you from the internet for good!” She got scared and kept making up other stories. For a girl who is almost 12 years old she sure can come up with a lot of shit! I said, “I am warning you one last time! And if you add people you don’t know or make up fake crap than you will be sorry!”

I ended it there and she went up to her room and sat and watched TV.

So what has Facebook done? It enhanced the art of making fake profiles using other real people’s names and children as young as 12 are clever enough to use such methods. So what do you think adults are doing?

Angry, They said what?, Whatever!