Over 7.5 Million Facebook Users Are Under 13

liqs8143 writes "Of the 20 million minors who actively used Facebook in the past year, 7.5 million of them were younger than 13, according to projections from Consumer Reports' latest State of the Net survey. Facebook's terms of service require users to be at least 13 years old. Also among this group of minors using Facebook, more than 5 million were 10 and under. Consumer Reports' survey found that their accounts were largely unsupervised by their parents, exposing them to malware or serious threats such as predators or bullies."

Re:Not surprising

[L4t3r4lu5]

Because children are culpable for their actions and know from a very early age about all of the dangers of using the internet, giving away personal information, and can accurately assess the risks involved with using social networking services. They also know, from birth, that roads are dangerous places, they shouldn't pick up used needles, and daddy's shotgun doesn't fire blanks.

children are stupid. The ones under 13 are very, very stupid. I know this because I work in education and have done for almost a decade. If they are unsupervised, they will press every button and click every link which has anything remotely to do with getting what they want, and no EULA will stop them.

This sits squarely on the parents. Not Facebook, not the children, but mom and dad who are fed up of bringing up their child and just want them to hit 18 ASAP. I'm not saying they should shoulder-surf 24/7 and only let them play Happy Fun Playground with Ponies and Sprinkles games, but actually taking the time to become involved in their internet use, or encouraging them in talking about the cool things they've learned or found, would be a start.

Re:So...

[TheRaven64]

Current FaceBook demographics:

• 7.5 million under-13s
• 50 million DoD-controlled bots
• 100 million marketroids
• 50 million sockpuppet accounts for people with no real friends to pretend that they're popular
• 250 million abandoned accounts
• 40 million people wondering why AOL / Geocities / MySpace looks so different these days
• 2.5 million - everyone else