Facebook Spam: What you don’t want your kids to see!

I had an interesting experience today. I attempted to check out the Facebook fan page of the National Cyber Security Alliance and this is what came up on my laptop:

This is not the type of page you’d want your young teens or tweens to land on.

Starting at the top, the first issue is the invitation to use Facebook credits.  As described by Facebook….

What kid or teen wouldn’t want to have a bit of Facebook dough to buy games and fun??!! Of course, eventually the free credits will wear out and then some real money for more credits will be required. That’s the rub and kids and teens won’t get the fine print.

The bottom of the page is even more interesting…Facebook Spam…and not for G-rated eyes. I can honestly say this is my first experience with Facebook spam and I would not have expected it en route to a cyber safety group’s page.

It’s important that we know these practices are occurring on Facebook so we can make sound decisions about whether or not our kids should be participating on this site. I’m not referring to teens…they are over 13 and old enough to be on Facebook by their terms of service and COPPA. I’m talking kids…under 13. They are simply not old enough to understand the implications of everything on this page nor should they be even exposed to it.  So, if you’ve allowed your kids to be on Facebook before they are 13, now you see what the risk truly is – exposure to all sorts of content that is just not appropriate for them. And, this is just the tip of the iceberg!!

For our teens, though, just because they are old enough to participate on Facebook doesn’t mean they are out of the woods with the wack of inappropriate content. It’s important that they know this can occur so they understand what it means and know how to handle it. Show them these pictures so they understand that SPAM can and does occur on Facebook.  Use what I experienced as a launch pad for your own discussion about whether this has occurred with them and how they would handle it. Be open minded and just listen.

As parents, it’s our job to help kids learn to follow the rules. We do this already with other age-related things offline: getting a driver’s license, voting, having that first drink in a bar. Now we need to learn to respect the age-related rules online. If we respect those rules, our kids will learn to as well. That’s how we keep them safe from inappropriate content and ad practices, and how they learn best practices for on line activities and behavior. That’s how we parent in the digital age.