From what i think, i don't think Social networks ban users under 16 but 15 below.
Why 15 below?
Most of the teenagers in the age between 13 to 15 have high curiosity about their surrounding especially their body structure.
Many might already have their 1st experience in ML by knowing anonymous from social networks who provide such services. It happened in many countries. Including mine.
Other than that issue, Teenagers have the reaction of being "nasty" by listening to parents' advices and so. The more you restrict them, the more the bounce back it will be.

yes

Converge magazine (a free subscription btw) has an article on Safe Networking Sites, which include a handful. I'm familiar with Whyville, but haven't been to the couple of others listed.

There *should* be a more complete list floating around the Net somewhere, don't you think, of safe sites for kids?

It's hard for social networks to ban users younger than 16 for the fact that they could lie about their age. Take Myspace for example. That is the most popular and used site among teens and adults. They don't have really good rules and they dont keep teens 15 and under all that safe. Even though those 16 and older can't view their profile, it takes a matter of changing your age to 15 or younger to view that profile. How do you think all those pedophiles are finding these young kids on that site?

Also, for parents who have teens and preteens who go online. You should check the history as soon as they get offline. If you find they have a Myspace profile, you need to talk to them because this is what they are easily looking at: http://www.myspace.com/tilatequila

She talks about doing drugs, having a lot of annoymous sex, and she takes very provocative pictures of herself. Girls will look up to that as how they need to be in order to get guys to drool over them and guys will see that women don't need to be respected at all. If you don't like the content you see on there, here is a website with a petition to take her profile off of Myspace and try to better the Myspace community. http://www.truth-of-tila.tk/

Validating that a child is a child. I saw an interesting solution to that not too long ago on a website to which I can't remember the name. it was publicly open, similar to many pages like myspace.com, and allowed users to submit pictures (again similar to myspace and other sites) but as a way to verify identity, they asked users to submit a picture with a sign stating their {username @ the website} so that it would be virtually impossible to say that this person was anybody other than who the sign said. I already posted this in another topic, which seems to have died already.
Thanks For Listening in
A Teen

I'm based in the UK and came across this forum. I thought you might like to get a view point from an overseas party as this is a commonly asked question in the uk. I think that social networks that abide to a system that can guarantee safety for under 18's should be able to admit children onto their site/s.

There should be a group that holds responsibility to award these sites a certification to prove that they have installed as much safety precaution as possible in these changing times. There should be an idiots guide for both parents and children of which the parent/s have to submit their details on the registration form for their children. As long as children are supervised and given a time allowance, they should be safe. Parents should be given lessons on how to check the history of their childrens sessions on the net.

I could go on but i think enough said. It all boils down to understanding what the social networks are about and what their policies are for under age users.

(This was edited by an admin ONLY to change from all upper case to lower and upper case to make it easier to read. Content was not altered)

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Edited by BlogSafety at 06/30/2006 8:05 AM

Good points Larry, and keeping the tone serious (for a change), my previous sarcasm points to the ridiculous reactionary politics being played here. As friends on MySpace I have two teens, one who has created a group against poverty, the other against genocide. These politically active kids are looking to network with other kids. Yes, there are other sites for this, but the sheer overwhelming numbers of MySpace point to the fact that many positives may erase negatives.

Preventing suicides, Columbine copycats (several cases have happened at MySpace), and even lesser events such as cyberbullying, fraud, etc. All of these things I think serve positive social purposes. Now all we need is for the media to wake up and recognize that focusing almost exclusively on negative impacts of MySpace in particular and the Net in general do much more harm than good.

Sorry there's no humor in this post... I'll try harder next time.

Statistically accidents in the bathroom are 1500 times more likely to happen than being abducted by an online predator. For that reason I have banned baths and showers in my house, and have instituted a "Don't Ask Don't Smell" policy which also has zero tolerance for body odor. Instituting this unfunded mandate means that we can safely co-exist without worrying about offending anyone.

Now all I have to do is build a giant wall between my neighbors and myself to keep them from peering at us when we fertilize our lawn.