Mark Zuckerberg Facebook to dream of opening under 13, because it could “help them with their education.” A possibility against which we rebelled contributor Jacques Henno, web specialist and the use of private data online.
The social network will be open to children. But the risk is too great they spend too much time there and they tell all their lives.
Last Monday, the “Wall Street Journal”, a great American economic and financial daily, revealed on his Facebook site, according to some sources, was preparing to host the age of 13.
So far, Facebook has chosen to adhere strictly to a U.S. law that regulates very strictly sites that wish to collect, for marketing purposes, information on the age of 13. This is why the terms of use of the famous social network stipulate that you can not use the network before the age of 13.
As a reminder, in 1998, the FTC (Federal Trade Commission), the federal agency in charge of consumer law in the United States, has enacted, called COPPA (English link), which protects children under 13 years a misuse of their personal information on the internet for commercial purposes. The U.S. web sites that wish to collect the name, surname, address or e-mail from a child under 13 should get permission from a parent, which implies a long process collection and verification of this agreement. To avoid administrative complications, most U.S. sites like Facebook – which, remember, is based in California, United States – have chosen to deny access to their services to under 13.
According to the “Wall Street Journal,” Facebook would allow under 13 to register, but under the control of their parents. Accounts of children being tied to those of their fathers or mothers who could control their children new contacts or applications (including games) that they could use.
By May 2011, Zuckerberg announced that he wanted to open its network to the age of 13, officially, for their “education” (sic).
They are already on Facebook, fools no one
In reality, the arrival of the age of 13 would allow Facebook to broaden its appeal to a popular audience for advertisers – children are often prescribers of products purchased by their parents – and game publishers (no doubt the young Children will rush on FarmVille, Mafia Wars and other games that partly explain the success of Facebook). But advertising represents 85% of the turnover of social network .
Especially, the opening to less than 13 years would end a hypocrisy: everyone knows that many of these children are already on the social network.
I regularly speak at schools to empower students by showing them, among others, all the traces they leave in using new technologies. And when I ask in CM2 (which, remember, children between 10 and 11 years) is on Facebook, one third of the students raised her hand!
Two reasons
Personally I am against the opening of Facebook to less than 13 years, for two reasons.
Second reason for my veto would encourage young children to connect to this network when they are not yet mature enough.
They’ll go on Facebook to like their big brothers, their sisters and their friends, but led to another, they will find themselves telling their whole lives. They will thus make it a habit to give up any notion of ownership over their personal data – in particular on their photos – and more broadly on their privacy or intimacy. They will accommodate in an age where they completely lack a step back from this problem.
And suddenly, once they reach adolescence, a period where they just might begin to have the maturity and critical thinking needed to assess their environment, their interaction with this environment and the technologies they use to interact, they will no longer do, because Facebook will complete part of their lives.
Mark Zuckerberg will have achieved its goal: to turn us into slaves of Facebook. By publishing our interests and our feelings on the network, we work for him, since we will supply him with information that enables them to better target advertisements that we offer. And so we allow it to earn more money!
