Facebook (http://www.facebook.com)

I agree with the reviews. My step-son's mother opened an account for him to play Farmville. We did not agree with him having an account since he is only 8 years old. She assured us she had the account private. Sure enough after a week or so one of her friends forgot they had an 8 yr old as a friend and were using inappropriate language which was displayed on his wall. There have been other incidents that showed her lack of monitoring the account so we have closed the account.

Who doesn't love Facebook. I have it and most of my friends have it; but when m,y daughter wanted it I was quite skeptical. Not that I was worried about inappropriate content, my daughter is good about that stuff. What worried me - and my worries came to fruition, was the CYBERBULLYING. One may laugh at the thought, but honestly, it's happening all over the place. Kids are committing suicide over being bullied, kids can be mean, and the ability to impulsively blurt something out about someone and not have to do it to their face is quite strong. Kids are not required to have fact to face communications anymore - they break up via text, they constantly IM and now...Facebook. I'm not a fan! Not for kids!

Safety is and not a problem. You can leash out information but as long as you keep only friends you know outside of the computer and block everyone else, it's fine. It does have an age limit of I think 14 but many people fake their age. Do not be fooled by celebritys, they are normal people pretending to be Miley Cyrus and Nick Jonas. They are posers. It is rarely you will find the real person. I say its safe for 11 and over but their not even meant to have an account so I would leave it until they are old enough to have an account. Once they are older enough to have one, just leave another couple of years until you are sure the responsible enough to have an account. Keep double checking their friends and information though as you never know who they could add. Keep them under your thumbs!

I thought I was never going to get a Facebook. At first, I thought having a Facebook is a waste of time, but now that I made an account, I loved it! You get to chat with friends and stuff! But beware, Facebook has a lot of bad stuff. Users can chat about sexual, violent or language filled topics. Some drinking and drugs might also appear in comments. But you usually just chat with friends. Unless you make friends with strangers. That would be wrong. There might also be pictures or videos of women in bikinis. Some might even be reveiling, showing their breasts. So if you are mature enough to not look for that sort of stuff, then you can have a facebook. There are games on the facebook website. Um, there are some multiplayer game on facebook. Don't play them unless you want to get stalked. They can see your profile name and other stuff if they search you later. So, yeah.

You really need to be careful with websites like this, because privacy is a big issue! Cause' whatever you post on there you can take off! Like my friend got her facebook when she was 5! And it seemed like her parents did not really know about it That is why it is still really dangerous! Because what if sometihng happend...???

OK, as a geek computer user I'm bringing up a kid that is going to be exposed to computers for the rest of her life. I set up her account (yes you are supposed to be 13)....made sure all the controls I could put were in place and retain the passwords and sign on information. I go in EVERY day to make sure no one is contacting her. We have only family on her facebook and one friend that I have approved, who also has his family watching him just as closely. She plays a few of the games and generally keeps in contact with family in this way. Since we live across country this is one of the few ways they get to "talk". We don't allow her to have any personal pictures except for her dog so that is not an issue. We have gone over the safety basics and have made it very clear that this is a learning experience on how to deal with the internet. I've had less problems with facebook than with some other "kid friendly" sites....I have to say the ONLY way we would have her on facebook is if I am vigilant on looking all the time at what is going on. That being said we've had a lot of fun and good experiences.

Firstly, it is actually against site policy for a child under the age of 13 to even sign-up. If it is discovered that a user is under that age, they will be removed from the site. There is a good deal of sexual content, as well as advertising. Some of this can be filtered out through filters built into the site, as well as ad blocking software. The applications can be even more iffy than the social networking. I found a crass user name on the Naruto game application. I figured seeing it was a kids cartoon I would report it. Unfortunately, the game is not ran by a company that only acquired rights, Crunchyroll. They quoted, "The Naruto game is relatively un-moderated so we don't really change names or anything." This should set off flags to parents. There are also violent apps such as Mafia Wars, in which you obtain bloodied weapons, or take hits out on each other. There are some kid safe apps as well. FarmVille is one of them. If your child is pretty trustworthy, and has a good head on their shoulders, Facebook can be a decent place. It is a great place to talk with your friends, share photos, and play a few games. Just like most of the internet, proceed with a little caution.

There comes a point in time where every teen will get a Facebook. It's just inevitable. The question is how early is too early.

I must say, in my one year on Facebook, I had not seen one of my 200 or so "friends" ("friend" used in the loosest interpretation of the word, more like "positive acquaintances/some friends/people you don't like, but they friended you anyway"): a) Give or receive cyber-bullying b) Get in any kind of danger as result of giving away too much information (at least, to the extent of my knowledge) I have however seen: a) Some rather curse-filled statuses (but seriously, if your kid is old enough to have a Facebook, than he/she should be old enough to know what the f-word is, and using it is not the automatic ticket to coolness) b) Horrible, horrible grammar of the first degree. c) A few statuses of a "questionable" nature (once again, if your kid is old enough to get a Facebook, he/she's old enough to know what those words are), hardly any photos though. Not saying that no bad stuff ever happens on Facebook, but I'm just going by my experiences on the site. I have, however: a) Been able to keep in touch with friends that either go to another high school or even live in another state so much more easily than I ever could with a phone. b) Been able to arrange/schedule "hang-out seshs" (hip terminology there for you grown-ups) mush quicker/easier than I could even dream of with my cell phone. So essentially, I find that the whole Facebook/social media scare is rather pointless and created by people who simply don't understand that something was not made with the intention to make kidnappings easier, but I guess that's how it always is with a new technology. So, yeah, I believe that if your kid seems healthy socially and is 13 at least, he/she should have a Facebook, considering it's probably going to replace the phone as the way most teens communicate, in my view at least. But what do I know? I don't friend the "morally corrupt" kids or the "stupid" kids (for the most part) on Facebook (and your kid probably shouldn't either). Oh, and "Facebook addiction" (we throw around the word "addiction" too much as a society) is much more rarer than it is made out to be. I find that for the most part, for every kid that spends half their non-school waking life on Facebook, there's one kid who checks the site for 30 minutes a day, at the longest, and still retains a pretty good social life outside of their computer screen. So in summary, Facebook is a pretty cool site. Not the best out their, but good when used for it's purpose. Best used in moderation. And it's negative aspects are over-inflated by the media. But once again, what do I know?