For users 13 to 17, Facebook is now a much freer place

Facebook is allowing young users to post text and photos publicly for the first time. 

|
Reuters
Facebook has done some pretty infuriating things over the years.

Facebook is loosening the restrictions placed on its younger users. 

Beginning this week, Facebook announced in a press release, 13- to 17-year-olds will have their sharing preferences set automatically to "friends," meaning that most posts – at least at first – will only be seen by a limited amount of people. But the social network says it will also give many teenagers the unprecedented ability to take their posts to a much wider audience. 

"Teens are among the savviest people using social media, and whether it comes to civic engagement, activism, or their thoughts on a new movie, they want to be heard. So, starting today, people aged 13 through 17 will also have the choice to post publicly on Facebook," Facebook reps said in the press release. "While only a small fraction of teens using Facebook might choose to post publicly, this update now gives them the choice to share more broadly, just like on other social media services."

Facebook promised that 13- to 17-year-olds would see an extra warning before they were able to take their posts public. And yet the move from Facebook has some wondering whether the social network – which now counts a user base of more than a billion people – will see some blow back from parents and from lawmakers

As Emily Bazelon of Slate notes in a blog post today, Facebook has been careful to dress up its new policy for young users as a win for "civic engagement." And yet Facebook doesn't derive its income from "civic engagement." It derives its income from advertisers, who want as much data as possible on consumers young and old. 

"In my reporting on young people and social media, I haven’t run into any teenagers lobbying to be heard more on Facebook. They are plenty heard already. But of course, this isn’t about what kids want. It’s about what Facebook wants, which is to make more money," Ms. Bazelon writes. "If kids can share publicly," she adds, "then their posts, or things they 'like,' can also turn into the advertising fodder that the company is banking on for profits." 

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to For users 13 to 17, Facebook is now a much freer place
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/Tech/2013/1017/For-users-13-to-17-Facebook-is-now-a-much-freer-place
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe