Privacy settings: ‘Restricted’ parents struggle with Facebook

Should children under 13 have access to social media? Parents share their dilemma

KARACHI: Saturday afternoon at the Tulip hall in the Beach Luxury hotel saw a large number of frazzled parents, many of whom had been put on Facebook’s ‘restricted’ list by their children.

They wanted to know the extent to which they can monitor their children’s activities on social media, particularly Facebook, where they cannot view entirely what their children are up to. Will we have to give up our entire lives to set a watch on what the children are up to? What about social networks, such as Snapchat, in which the content self-destructs in 10 seconds! How does one keep a check on that?

As these questions were fired one after the other, a lively debate ensued between the audience and the speakers at a session titled ‘Should Children under 13 be on Facebook?’ on day one of the School of Tomorrow conference.



Badar Khushnood, a businessman and a digital marketing professional, was of the opinion that whatever degree of restrictions and scrutiny has to be put on internet usage, it has to be done at the national level. “One can’t hold Facebook responsible for it,” he said. “The kids of today are digital natives. You can’t just keep them away from technology.”

As the audience members nodded in agreement, Children Global Network CEO Mehnaz Aziz pointed out how children today want the gratitude without being entitled for it. “Facebook is a gateway to the internet,” she said. “Bullying is rampant on such platforms and kids tend to hide their Facebook responses.”



As the discussion moved towards building better parent-child relationships and setting the right examples at home, Khushnood said that the balance rests with how much you are willing to share information about topics that are otherwise openly available on the internet. “The internet packages are designed in such a way that everyone is encouraged by the government to use them,” he said, giving the example of how the cost of internet is far higher for a post-paid SIM user than for those who can access it on prepaid packages.



On the ways to control Facebook use, Aziz said that as a parent one has no choice but to put one’s foot down as far as time limitations on its use are concerned. On the other hand, Khushnood suggested linking one’s email address to the child’s Facebook account. “But of course your child can have another profile than the one you know about,” he said, realising the shortcoming of his solution immediately. “There really is no way out of it,” he added with a laugh.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 29^th, 2015.