Should Facebook Raise Its Minimum Age Requirement?

Desi Jedeikin

Another Facebook-related poll has been done and this time the questions were regarding Facebook's minimum age requirement. Nearly 50% of those surveyed thought the minimum age requirement should be higher than 13. 19% of those who thought it should be higher, wanted to see it raised to 18! Teen life with no Facebook??? How would that even be possible?? I mean, I know I would totally miss all of my little cousin's totally 'hilarious' updates and dingbatty responses to world news. Sorry, cuz!

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Although I pretty much expected that people would want the age raised or kept the same, I was surprised that such a high percentage wanted it lowered! 13% of those polled said that the age should be lowered to 10-12 and 5% though 7-9 was perfectly acceptable. Did they let 7-9 year olds participate in this poll?? Does anyone really need to be bombarded with updates about Webkinz and Club Penguin requests?

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I'm pretty sure we're all aware of people who joined Facebook before they were13, either with parental permission or by being a sneaky little tweener. But you know the age of 13 isn't just a random number Facebook pulled out of a hat, I'm sure they'd love to have more users. The minimum age requirement is necessitated by child privacy laws. So you have to BY LAW wait until you're 13 to act like a fool on Facebook. And then you can continue acting the fool for the rest of your life. Why the rush??