Children and their privacy on social network sites

According to the popularity of Facebook among students in the Netherlands, Facebook is also becoming very popular by children. 70 percent of the Dutch children between 9 and 12 year have an account on Facebook or Hyves. Due to the fact that more children use social network sites, these sites have to be private for the safety of the children. It is important that the profiles of children are only visible for the ‘friends’ of the child and not all other members of social network sites. Nowadays, children say that they know that they can change their settings, so that their profile is only visible for ‘friends’, but they do not want this. Therefore, the settings of the social network site of a child should be private automatically.

It is necessary that the profiles are automatically private and parents do also have to keep an eye on the social network sites of their children.