April 02, 2008
Children and Social Networks
According to a survey published in the UK today(Ofcom), almost half of children online use social network sites. Over a quarter of eight to 11-year-olds in the UK have a profile on a social network Sites such as Bebo, MySpace and Facebook. These sites do set a set a minimum age of between 13 and 14 to create a profile but none actively enforce the age limit.
Ofcom surveyed 5,000 adults and 3,000 children found 49% of those between eight and 17 have a profile. According to the survey authors, "social networks are clearly a very important part of people's lives and are having an impact on how people live their lives. Children's lives are very different from what they were 20 years ago. Social networks are a way of creating a social bond."
In the UK, the Home Office has been working with social networking firms and is expected to publish a set of guidelines for the sites around best practice, security and privacy. The report is expected to recommend that profiles created by children are set to private by default, or are only viewable by friends nominated by the user.
It also suggests that social sites maintain a distinct contact page listing contact numbers that children can use to get help.
The three leading social networks, MySpace, Bebo and Facebook, all say they remove profiles of users that are found to be too young on their sites. But at present no technology is used to actively verify the age of users.
The new guidelines are set to encourage social networking sites to investigate age verification technologies and to give better signposting to users about privacy settings, and warnings about the implications of posting personal details.
Office of Communications (Ofcom)
Link to full Report (pdf)
Social Networking: A quantitative and qualitative research report into
attitudes, behaviours and use