If you have children of a certain age, they either have their own Facebook accounts or have asked you when they will be old enough to have their own. Parenting used to be a lot easier: back when my daughter was a teen, we just had to worry about AIM and inappropriate websites. Well, those bad sites are still with us, but now we have to contend with social networks.
Facebook’s policy is to allow 13 and up to have access, but I know plenty of underage kids that have their own logins. Surveys from last fall show many 10, 11, and 12-year olds have accounts. And whether you agree or disagree with the age limit, you might want to take a look at this survey from SodaHead that was done last week. Not surprisingly, adults and kids differ on what is the most appropriate age of Facebook consent.
But also interestingly, childless adults are more permissive than parents, a third of whom think 18 is a better age to start with Angry Birds (good luck with that, folks).
As of this month, teens make up about 20 percent of the total US Facebook population.