Kids

A new rumor has been sweeping Facebook — that people are stealing photos of your children and posting them to a page called “Infancy.” The status that I saw, which had been shared 600 times back then and more than 3,500 times at the time of writing, claimed that “loads of local kids” were shown, including the author’s own, and demanded the removal of the page. But here’s the deal — the page was automatically generated by Facebook, like this one about rock climbing or this one about food. In fact, above the photographs, it even said “photos of my friends and infancy.”

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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.

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With Mother’s Day on the calendar this coming Sunday, Facebook examined the relationships between mothers and their children on the social network, finding that 13 percent of children planned to wish their moms a happy Mother’s Day on Facebook.

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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.

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A change in the Child Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) means that children under the age of 13 can be shown ads targeted toward them when they’re online. This could lead to Facebook lowering its age of admission.

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If your children are in their early to mid-20s, don’t hold your breath waiting for Facebook friend requests from them. That was just one nugget of information from the Facebook Data Science Team, which analyzed posts on the social network that were anonymized and processed automatically by users who identified themselves as parents or children to get a better sense of how families interact with each other on Facebook.

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Attention, kids on Facebook: Big Brother may be watching your activity on the social network. If your parents are concerned enough to pay for its service, Big Brother comes in the form of SociallyActive.

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Facebook users can tag friends in videos, photos, check-ins and status updates, among other types of interactions. But there is an etiquette to be followed, as not everyone appreciates being tagged. When is it appropriate to tag and when should you just keep it to yourself?

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Facebook has long been adamant about preventing cyberbullying, and the company announced recently that more controls are in place so teens can feel safer on the social network.

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A new tool to help parents protect their kids on Facebook, and to help Facebook users in general avoid fake user profiles, was developed by Israel’s Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

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