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March 15, 2012

Is 13 too young for Facebook?

A study says that many believe the requirement by law to be 13 in order to join Facebook should be set even higher.

By Cbr Rolling Blog

The amount of teens using social networking sites has jumped 25% in the past five years with 80% of teens currently using social media sites. Teenagers are the second largest age group to use social networking sites.

Facebook is the number one social networking site in the world and teens using Facebook remains popular but some are shaking their heads at the current age requirement to have a Facebook profile.

Sodahead.com surveyed 2,000 people in which nearly 35% said that age 13 was an appropriate age to be able to join the social networking site. However, when adding the number of overall votes, the majority think that 13 year olds are too young to have access to Facebook.

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Nearly 30% of those surveyed said ages 14 -17 should be allowed to create profiles and nearly 20% said children should wait until they are over 18.

13% said the ages of 10-12 were appropriate ages for having Facebook profiles and 5% said they approved of children aged 7-9 joining.

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Currently child privacy laws have set the minimum age at 13 years old.

Teens also thought the 13 year old age requirement was appropriate with 57% saying the restriction was fair and 25% saying it should be raised to over the age of 13.

Of course kids will be kids and the study found that many have facebook accounts who are under 13 anyway, with as many as 55% of 12 year olds and 32% of 11 year olds owning one.

 

Please follow this author on Twitter @Tineka_S or comment below.

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