News

Facebook To Start Locking Underage User Accounts

Despite Facebook not being the trendiest social-media for the young people these days, I think it’s fairly safe that the platform has a quite significant number of young users. Despite this, the social media site does actually have an active policy that people under the age of 13 shouldn’t have an account. This is largely for legal protections of the company in terms of the user agreement. Despite this though, it hasn’t stopped many creating one none-the-less.

In a report via The Telegraph, however, after years of what can only be called either inaction or neglect, Facebook has pledged to begin actively blocking accounts of users under the age of 13.

Well, Better Late Than Never

In fairness to Facebook, similar to many websites, it has always operated on the ‘honour system’ of account creation. As such, they can, sort of, legally wash their hands if underage users are on the platform. The matter has, however, come to highlight as a Channel 4 documentary showed that the social media site was not actively doing anything for users who were clearly below the required age.

As part of the new pledge, Facebook has said it is doubling the number of its safety and security employees. This will increase the number to around 20,000. In addition, they will now look to actively block accounts for users who appear to be below the required age. While 20,000 might sound like a lot, remember that Facebook does have over 2 billion accounts.

Child Grooming

Facebook needed to do this. It’s no secret that the social media platform has been used to groom children. As such, as tempting as it is for parents to allow their children on it, I think the cons massively outweigh the pros in this regard.

It’s late, but at least the social media site has finally decided to start playing an active role here.

What do you think? Is this better late than never from Facebook? – Let us know in the comments!