Both Zheng and Gabriela explored the idea of underage children on Facebook earlier in the year. Zheng discuss the benefits of allowing pre-thirteen year olds access to the social network (https://blogs.princeton.edu/sisn/2012/10/01/children-on-facebook/) and Gabriela wrote about the laws that prevented Facebook from allowing preteens to use their services (https://blogs.princeton.edu/sisn/2012/10/03/law-prohibits-children-under-13-on-facebook/).

Let’s explore how Facebook prevents kids from joining the network.

The first line of defense lies in the signup. On the form, Facebooks asks you for your First name, Last name, Email, and birthday. This birthday form serves to screen out underage users. The same technique is seen in other places on the Internet too, such as when signing up for a Gmail account (which incidentally does not allow kids under 16 to join) and when buying a M rated video game online. If you enter an age less than 13, the page tells you that “Your request cannot be processed” and does not let you register until you reload the page.

But there’s a tongue-in-cheek cartoon describing the Internet and the people who use it:

On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.

On the Internet, you can be anything. You can be a drag queen. You can be a 29 year old, single, gay rocket scientist working at NASA. You can be human. You can be over 13 when you’re actually not. When I was 13, I do not think I knew anyone who actually used their real birthday or birth year on the internet. My internet self back then was always born on January 1, 1980.

An interesting related statistic is that 93% of Steam (a popular video game distribution platform) users are born on January 1.

So really, the birthday request does nothing to stop people from pretending to be older than 13. Some kids may even enter birthdays making them over 13 by pure habit.

The second line of defense lies used the be requiring people to specify their network. When I first signed up for Facebook, I had to pretend that I was a member some High School to join. However, Facebook had gotten rid of that feature.

The final line of defense is Facebook’s decision to delete any account they discover belongs to a pre-thirteen year old. It works, somewhat. Sometimes a kid complains online that their Facebook got deleted and that they had to remake their account. Out of 7.5 million underage users. (Sorry Zheng. My source). It’s like fighting a forest fire with a little handheld spray bottle.

In short, Facebook just doesn’t care. They go through the actions of getting rid of underage users, but don’t actually spend the resources on combating the problem. And, to be honest, underage users are good for Facebook — it pretty much prepares a new generation of people to use Facebook.

The question is, should we care? Many don’t. Many do. But, should we pass more legislation like COPPA and prevent underaged children from access from services like Gmail and Facebook for good?