The Social Enthusiast

Last week, while driving into work, I stumbled upon a rather heated debate on a local radio morning show.  Surprisingly, it wasn’t about the BP oil spill or the Joran van der Sloot case or another current event.  The debate in question was about allowing children to have Facebook profiles.  Several parents called into the show to voice their opinions.  One mother shared that she allowed her eight-year-old son to create a profile because “all of his friends have one” and she didn’t want her son to be “left out.”  Another mother called in and said that even though her six-year-old daughter had been “begging her for months” for permission to have a profile, she refused to let her, because of safety issues.

In my opinion, children (and by children, I mean anyone under the age of 18), have no business having a Facebook profile.  My main problem with children belonging to social networking sites is the lack of privacy.  We’ve all heard horror stories about pedophiles stalking children online—if you remember, in the past few years, MySpace has been the target of some very bad press for this reason.

So what’s a kid to do?

Togetherville.com is hoping to be the answer to this question. The idea behind the site is that parents and kids can explore social media together in a safe environment.   The network, which launched last month, bills itself as “a fun, safe social site where kids under 10 can play games, create art, and learn new things, with you and people you know and trust there to supervise.” So how exactly does Togetherville keep kids safe?  The site uses the parents’ own social networks, such as Facebook, so that “there is no way anyone anonymous or unknown can ever interact with your child.”

The "kids" version of Togetherville. Image by kmakice via Flickr.

The "adult" version of Togetherville. Image by kmakice via Flickr.