At What Age Should Children Be Given Facebook Accounts?

Children have so many things to worry about, should social media be another one?

When I was a kid, I think the only things I was warned about what kids shoplifting and flashers!

As a child in the 80s, it felt like an innocent time and I’m sure it wasn’t and all children were protected from the badness in the world. Roll forward 20+ years and I’m now the parent to a 14 year old and 14 month old girls.

There’s terrorist attacking our world, governments that are crippling the economy, Brexit giving us uncertain futures and all the while having this constant beauty pageant that is social media. In the 80s the idea of sharing every picture throughout your day for 1000s of people to see was only available for those in the newspaper.

Social media has changed the way the world communicates and for a blogger like me who lives 200 miles from family and friends from younger years it’s great to shares my views, family photos and day to day stories. But I’m old enough, strong enough in character and confident to be able to take any potential trolling or criticism.

When Beth was about 10 there was definitely a conversation about SM and thankfully she took our guidance and it was a conversation that we then put off for a few more years.

At 14, we spoke about it again. I was initially against a FB account as there’s a million and 1 ways to communicate with friends why does anyone need it. But after a number of talks, when everyone in your year has it, friendship groups are forming online and this new world is moving quicker that you’re learning, I felt that she’ll fall behind with society.

There was literally no way we could say no when the arguments for were so strong and we had to install the trust and responsibility should anything happen, that we’ll be trusted to speak to and let know when something’s not right. Be it trolling, random messages, cyber bulling or profile hacking.

The power of social networking can be a good thing though too and crowdsourcing support and guidance is now the norm. Somewhere like Qutee as a parent is paramount for asking questions to a large audience and getting a range of answers for people outside of your friendship group.

I wish I’d known about the parenting function when I first became a step dad and then a dad to Dorothy. There was so many questions! I’ve found it now so I’m hoping I’ll have no in-answered questions now 🙂

So what age should Children be given a Facebook account?

So here’s my latest Qutee discussion, should children have Facebook accounts and at what age should they start?

www.qutee.com

So if you’re a parent, going to be a parent or just want to have your say check out some of the really interesting topics over in the parenting 101 hub – https://www.qutee.com/h/parenting-101/ please take a look at the above and share your opinion.

I’m really interested to hear what you thought about how we went about dealing with the FB issue and how you would have done it differently.

This post was sponsored by Qutee but the topic wording and discussion threads was all mine and one I feel really worried and passionate about. Please use the Qutee discussion section above to let us know what you think!