Facebook and many other websites bar people under age 13 considering that the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) requires websites to give special treatment to help children 12 or younger. Legal issues aims to stop marketers prying information that is personal from children or using their data to promote to them. Sites must get parental permission before allowing kids to enter, and must take measures to protect privacy.
Facebook declines to acknowledge a large number of of its efforts to block children usually are not working.
The issue has taken on new relevance since the Federal Trade Commission finalizes rules to help promote restrict companies and Web web-sites that target youths or are targeted at young audiences.
Facebook, the world's leading social media marketing company with 955 million people, has said that the law isn't going to apply to it because it explicitly restricts usage of its site to people outdated 13 and older.
Facebook has made some progress in identifying preteens and excluding them on the site. A June Consumer Reports review showed that Facebook eliminates as many as 800, 000 users under age 13 in a very year through its tiered tests process, which the company declines to spell out.
The study still estimates 5. 6 thousand children are on Facebook, a figure that experts declare includes many who create accounts with help from their parents.
The Consumer Reports data originates from a January 2012 survey regarding 2, 002 adults with property Internet. Participants were chosen by TNS, a research firm. The actual margin of error is in addition or minus 2 percentage things.
"It's not surprising to us to find out 12-year-olds sneaking onto Facebook, inches said FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz, saying the specific situation was "particularly complicated" if mother and father helped them. "Is it unpleasant? In some ways it is usually. Is it a story in monochrome? Not really. "
A Reuters test of Facebook's signup process implies that a child could bypass this site's screening features with general ease. The site effectively impeded a fictitious sign-up from the underage prospective user. But right after an hour's wait, the site accepted a sign-up using the same name, email, password and birthday but citing a new birth year.
Facebook declined to talk about the data or describe it is efforts to outlaw children. Spokesman Frederic Wolens said in an email that Facebook is "committed to improving protections for all young people online".
Larry Magid, who serves on Facebook's advisory board and co-directs the online world group Connect Safely, said he while others studied the issue for 12 months and found no way to share with if children were lying on the net.
"The only solution that I realize of is to access some sort of national ID or school files, " he said. "There are good reasons that we don't do this kind of.... I'm sure this is quite simple to do in totalitarian routines. "
Senator Richard Blumenthal, the outspoken privacy advocate whose youngest child is 18, said children's vulnerability to prospective sexual predators and susceptibility to advertising were reasons to help keep the 12-and under set off most websites. "Our children were not upon Facebook at that age, and they also would not be now, inches he said.
When gullible preteens or "tweens" go online they often reveal sensitive files, said Kathryn Montgomery, who teaches at American University and was an earlier advocate of the 1998 COPPA Tlaw.
"What we hoped about these kinds of rules is to get companies to act conscientiously toward kids. It's not all to easy to do, " said Montgomery.
Fb now boasts 158 million You. S. users, according to May figures on the data firm comScore. If your website more effectively banned children, it might stand to lose about 3. 5 percentage of its U. S. marketplace.
Ironically, one reason it's all to easy to game Facebook's screening process could be the law passed to protect kids. COPPA bars companies from saving most data on children. The FTC has said it could look skeptically on companies saving childrens' names or email addresses even when the data simply helped these people prevent children logging onto their own sites.
Children who aren't informed enough to game Facebook's process often get parental help, as outlined by a 2011 study headed by Danah Boyd, a senior investigator at Microsoft Research. She found that 55 percentage of parents of 12-year-olds said that the youngster was on Facebook and that 76 percent of the people had helped the child gain access.
"Many recent reports have highlighted exactly how difficult it is to enforce age restrictions on the web, especially when parents want their children to access online content and services, inches said Facebook's Wolens.
On Fb, children are exposed to promoting for sugary, high-fat foods, what type increasingly pulled from children's tv shows.
"We found lots of foods on Facebook being advertised, including many which can be targeted to children, " explained Jennifer Harris, director of marketing initiatives at Yale University's Rudd Core for Food Policy and Unhealthy weight.
KRAVE CEREAL IS ONE-THIRD SWEETS
One is Kellogg's new Krave cereal, a product which is roughly one-third sweets. With advertisements featuring an animated, pudgy Krave Krusader, it currently counts 456, 000 "likes" upon Facebook.
Kellogg's said it wouldn't intend to market Krave to tweens and complied with the industry initiative to not marketplace high-fat, high-sugar products to kids. "Krave follows Facebook's policy that every fans must be 13 or maybe older, " the company said in a very statement.
Dr. Victor Strasburger, chief in the division of Adolescent Medicine, University or college of New Mexico Department regarding Pediatrics, said the Krave Krusader ads are component of what he called "unethical" appeals by sugary cereal makers. Almost 20 percent of U. Ohydrates. children aged 6-17 are fat, according to a 2011 federal government report.
Child advocates say that even when Facebook is not appealing straight away to children, the company needs to appreciate that ads aimed at teenaged users will even attract tweens, who imitate old peers.
"I don't think Facebook deliberately is out and gets kids right now, " said Jeff Chester in the Center for Digital Democracy. "I think when they target teens the way they do, they know that they'll pull in a lot of younger kids.
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