From the mailbag:
"Dear MamaBear,
My 15 year old wants a Facebook account.
I don't think she should have one, I've heard about all the negatives.
What do you think?
Anonymous"
Dear A,
It all depends upon you, of course, but my take…
I think your 15 year old should have a FB account with the following 2 stipulations.
1.) He accepts you as a friend.
The fact is, he's underage. It's your parental responsibility to see what's going on.
2.) He writes you an essay that outlines all the dangers for social networking.
This way, you *know* he's at least *aware* of cyber-bullying, ganging and the like.
My kids have FB accounts, and you had better believe it…I'm in their networks.
You can also create a fake FB profile and test your child to see if he will blindly accept friends he doesn't know about…I've done that several times to ensure my kids keep to the rules.
Remember, your kid can create a FB account from the library, from his friends' house, etc….it's futile to actually forbid it.
Make sure it's used wisely instead.
Thus speaks…MamaBear
ps – speaking about Facebook, have you seen:
