One aspect of the networking sites out there on the web is collecting data. Doesn't matter for a social or professional aspect of the business. Collecting good information, or rather maintaining a healthy database is key in its own sense. The importance of quality of data is right at the center of the company owning it and we assure you, they take it pretty seriously. So when a web user goes online faking information while registering on a portal or while submitting information required to access a piece of content; the whole idea of the health and quality of database goes right out of the window. Consider a scenario where a site has a metrics for progress on age group of the users that access their content online. What happens when majority of the users filling up this data provide an escalated number? BOOM...
The scenario gets worse when its the children who start doing this. So when Facebook(or reports) says they are planning to let children under 13 years of age inn, they certainly are aware that quite a few of them are already using their online service just by faking the number. The only point of making the change or taking that step would be, yes you guessed it, health and quality of data. Till now Facebook and many other online services can't give access to this population of the world since the Federal laws don't allow them to collect information about this group without obtaining consent from their parents. Obviously the consent thing would be cumbersome, so the easy thing is to impose the ban on the age group and; deal with some amount of fake, unhealthy data!
Lets accept the fact that in this web world, parents want their children to access the online contents for accessing study material or Google-ing information required from an academic point of view. So while children have an easy access to the internet, there is no way to stop
them lying about what they provide you on the web. Making
the entry official would be one way to prevent these kids from lying
about their age and any other data they may be fiddling with. How? Well,
possibly by linking the kids account to their parents' accounts. Facebook is assumed to be still in the test mode for pulling of the age restriction and recognizes in a note on "how difficult it is to enforce age restrictions on the Internet,
especially when parents want their children to access online content and
services.We are in continuous dialogue with
stakeholders, regulators and other policymakers about how best to help
parents keep their kids safe in an evolving online environment".
The scenario gets worse when its the children who start doing this. So when Facebook(or reports) says they are planning to let children under 13 years of age inn, they certainly are aware that quite a few of them are already using their online service just by faking the number. The only point of making the change or taking that step would be, yes you guessed it, health and quality of data. Till now Facebook and many other online services can't give access to this population of the world since the Federal laws don't allow them to collect information about this group without obtaining consent from their parents. Obviously the consent thing would be cumbersome, so the easy thing is to impose the ban on the age group and; deal with some amount of fake, unhealthy data!
Lets accept the fact that in this web world, parents want their children to access the online contents for accessing study material or Google-ing information required from an academic point of view. So while children have an easy access to the internet, there is no way to stop
them lying about what they provide you on the web. Making
the entry official would be one way to prevent these kids from lying
about their age and any other data they may be fiddling with. How? Well,
possibly by linking the kids account to their parents' accounts. Facebook is assumed to be still in the test mode for pulling of the age restriction and recognizes in a note on "how difficult it is to enforce age restrictions on the Internet,
especially when parents want their children to access online content and
services.We are in continuous dialogue with
stakeholders, regulators and other policymakers about how best to help
parents keep their kids safe in an evolving online environment".
Its not a bad idea to let the kids' real world parents be their Facebook parents, so they keep a watch and have a final say on whom their kids can be friends with. We are all aware that for the 13 to 17 age group Facebook already has a default setting about who can see their posts, and that's friends-of-friends, so may be only friends for under 13 would be a nice way to start. The age group however is quite a nice number for advertisers;from a responsibility point of view Facebook might be well off keeping the adverts off these profiles.
Whatever be the rules, its difficult without the parent supervision to keep a close eye and still be building a safe virtual playground for the kids. In financial terms, it looks too demanding for Facebook to be creating a whole new section on its online service possibly for the youngest of the online users, at least genuine ones. Will they do it for the reputation base as a social media giant or will they be forced not to for the same reason? Would you allow Facebook access to your 10 year old kid? I think I would rather have mine in the playground then be in between likes and comments; that are nothing more than flex of a single muscle, or is that couple of muscles..hush..whatever!!
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