newjerseynewsroom.com

BY BOB HOLT

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

Mark Zuckerberg, the head of Facebook, believes that getting children into social-networking at younger ages would help them to learn.

At a conference on private investment in education, Zuckerberg said he wants to open Facebook up to children under 13 years old, a move that would require law changes.

According to Forbes, a spokesperson for the Federal Trade Commission said the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act doesn’t restrict users under 13-years-old to be on the sites, but it requires site operators to fully inform parents of their information collection, use, and disclosure practices, and get verifiable parental consent before the children can register.

Facebook doesn’t require verification of a user’s age when they signs up. Privacy attorney Natalie Newman said Facebook stays in compliance with the law as long as they deactivate any account when they are notified about a minor’s profile.

According to Consumer Reports, 7.5 million children under 13 use Facebook and a million children were harassed, threatened, or cyberbullyied through Facebook in the past year.

Nonprofit Consumers Union feels that young children don't understand the implications of sharing personal information on Facebook. Recently, a 13-year-old New Hampshire student was suspended because of a Facebook post in which she wished Osama bin Laden had killed her math teacher.

Consumers Union said in a letter to Zuckerberg that the social network needed to be "more diligent and effective" in protecting the privacy of the estimated 20 million people under 18 who used Facebook over the past year.

At a congressional hearing about underage users earlier this month. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said it was "indefensible" Facebook had only 100 employees monitoring 600 million users, according to the Press of Atlantic City.

On the question of how Facebook's social features would be used by younger children, Zuckerberg told Fortune, "Because of the law’s restrictions we haven't even begun this learning process. If they're lifted, then we'd start to learn what works. We’d take a lot of precautions to make sure that they [the younger kids] are safe."

Zuckerberg said he thinks education will become much more social in the future, and believes technology will enable people to learn a lot from other students.