Stay at Home vs. Work Debate

I have seen so many kids who say they are 16, 18 years old on facebook and myspace so I thought I would ask a few questions about the rules in your own home regarding your kids and social websites:

1. Does your child/ren have a facebook, myspace, twitter, other social website account?

2. At what age did you allow them to have this/these accounts?

3. If you have not allowed them to have an account, have you spied on them to see if they do have one?

4. If you found one, what would the consequence be (besides shutting it down) (if you are not alright with it)?

1. Does your child/ren have a facebook, myspace, twitter, other social website account?-- dd(13) yes; ds (9) no

2. At what age did you allow them to have this/these accounts? -- 13, partially because that's the legal age for facebook, and partially because her maturity level was right

3. If you have not allowed them to have an account, have you spied on them to see if they do have one? -- spied? No. I don't spy on my kids. I do, however, check their internet usage history, as well as block many sites.  Dd had a FB before she was 13 (got it by lying about her age); I made her shut it down.

4. If you found one, what would the consequence be (besides shutting it down) (if you are not alright with it)? -- depends on what site, what they said/how they reacted to me, and many other factors. For dd, we just shut it down adn made her wait.

1. Does your child/ren have a facebook, myspace, twitter, other social website account?

Both kids have a facebook account.

2. At what age did you allow them to have this/these accounts?

13.

3. If you have not allowed them to have an account, have you spied on them to see if they do have one?

N/A

4. If you found one, what would the consequence be (besides shutting it down) (if you are not alright with it)?

I don't think there is much use trying to keep a teen from having a facebook account when all of their friends do and it's as necessary for them to have one as it used to be for us to be allowed to talk to our friends on the phone. We've not allowed them to have the accounts until they are 13, per website policies. They also have to let us have all their passwords and to be their "friends" on facebook so that anyone out there who wants to do my kids harm know that I am monitoring their accounts. As you well know. So because we haven't forbidden them from doing something that's pretty much part of teen culture these days, we don't have to fight the battle of them defying us and doing it anyway.

Does your child/ren have a facebook, myspace, twitter, other social website account?

Why? Are you looking for more friends?