Facebook-owned photo-sharing network Instagram is under fire from advocates for children’s safety, with more than 4,500 signatures having been collected on a petition on Change.org that calls for Instagram to make the default settings private for users aged 13 through 17, and not geotag- and geolocation-enabled.
We're kicking off our upcoming Social Media Marketing Boot Camp with a special keynote presentation by Ella Chick (left), the digital producer at Anderson Cooper 360°. She'll discuss how the network uses social media for breaking news and leverages social media to draw attention to organizations and causes. Learn more about our program and register here. 
You must be at least 13 years old to join Facebook, but many kids bypass that rule, often with help from their parents. That may not be the best idea, according to blog Babysitting Jobs, which offered 10 reasons why parents should not let their preteen offspring have accounts on the social network.
As Facebook considers letting kids younger than 13 create accounts, the Center for Digital Democracy sent a letter to Co-Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, pleading for the social network to not collect youngsters’ personal information if they are allowed to join.
According to published reports, Facebook is testing technology aimed at scrapping its oft-ignored minimum age of 13 and allowing younger kids to join the social network, albeit with parental supervision.
A female student in the Minnewaska school district in Minnesota who has a Facebook page despite being one year under the social network’s age limit was hauled into a meeting with a school counselor and a deputy sheriff and pressured into surrendering her passwords for Facebook and email.
