Close to a quarter of children in the UK between the ages of 8 and 12 are able to get around age restrictions imposed by social networks Facebook, Bebo and MySpace, according to a survey by online identify firm Garlik.
Because of this the majority (72%) of parents are monitoring their kids online activity. Twenty-five percent of parents secretly login to their child’s social networking page and over a quarter (26%) have created their own social networking profile to monitor their kids.
“That parents feel compelled to monitor their children on this scale should send a powerful message to the big social networking sites,” said Tom Ilube, Garlik CEO. “With three quarters of a million underage users in the UK, Facebook, MySpace and Bebo need to take their own age restriction policies far more seriously to help allay parents’ real fears.”
British kids spend an average of an hour a day on a social networking site and openly admit to reckless behavior online. Twenty-six percent of 8-15 year olds admit they have strangers as friends on their social networking profiles and twenty percent have met strangers they only encountered online.
Sixty-six percent admit posting personal information on their profile including, where they go to school and their cell phone number.
More than half (58%) of parents say they are more active in motioring their children’s use of social networking sites than they were a year ago and 89 percent have talked to their children about the risks of social networking sites.
“Children are at the vanguard of the social networking phenomenon, using sites such as Facebook and Bebo in the same way other generations used the telephone,” said Ilube. “With the summer holidays upon us and kids spending hours on the internet, busy parents can’t be expected to monitor their children’s activities all the time.”
