Should Kids Under 13 Be on Facebook?

In a perfect, law-abiding world, no child under 13 has a Facebook account. But this world is pretty far from ideal, if the 7.5 million tweens — and younger kids — trolling the social-media behemoth are any gauge. Now, if Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg gets his way, that already impressive number will explode.

Zuckerberg told the NewSchools Venture Fund’s Summit in Burlingame, Calif., that he’d like younger children to be permitted to patronize his site. Technically, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) prohibits websites that gather data about users from allowing access to anyone younger than 13. In reality, though, COPPA is pretty ineffectual.

Consumer Reports (CR) recently announced results of an annual survey that found that “more than one-third of the 20 million minors who actively used Facebook in the past year” were under 13.

According to TIME.com’s Techland blog, “that number could be low, since it’s only based on parents who knew their underage kids were Facebook members:”

In fact CR found that over 5 million of Facebook’s 7.5 million-plus underage were as young as “10 and under.” … That’s not the worst of it. CR also found that underage kids using Facebook were unsupervised by parents. The site claims — not wrongly — that this exposes them to “malware or serious threats such as predators or bullies.”

Consider other points raised in the report like: 15% of all Facebook users post “their current location or travel plans,” 34% post their birth date in full, and 21% with children post their children’s names and pictures.

What about Facebook’s privacy controls, your bastion against all things nefarious? CR found “roughly one in five” weren’t using them.

Still Zuckerberg insists that connecting on Facebook — for educational purposes, natch — is a must for young kids. “That will be a fight we take on at some point,” CNNMoney quoted him as saying. “My philosophy is that for education you need to start at a really, really young age.”

Zuckerberg, not so far removed from the gawky age of 13 himself, says that Facebook has not begun researching how to open up the site to young kids and protect them at the same time. “Because of the restrictions we haven’t even begun this learning process,” he said. “If they’re lifted, then we’d start to learn what works. We’d take a lot of precautions to make sure that they [younger kids] are safe.”

Whew. That’s reassuring.

Still, it’s undeniable that kids simply don’t have the same powers of judgment as adults. Consider, for example, the New Hampshire teen who mourned on Facebook that Osama bin Laden hadn’t first offed her math teacher before he was killed. ”In hindsight, she’s mortified that she said that, but she’s a 13-year-old kid,” the girl’s mother, Kimberly Dell’isola, told a local television station.

That’s exactly why the publisher of Consumer Reports isn’t quite as cavalier as Zuckerberg about little ones friending and tagging to their hearts’ content. On Friday, the nonprofit Consumers Union worried that kids and teens don’t really get why it’s so important to self-censor what they share with the online world. “We urge Facebook to strengthen its efforts to identify and terminate the accounts of users under 13 years of age, and also to implement more effective age-verification methods for users signing up for new accounts,” Ioana Rusu, the regulatory counsel for Consumers Union, wrote in a letter to Zuckerberg.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Rusu’s letter came on the heels of a congressional hearing questioning the security of underage Facebook users:

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) said it was “indefensible” that Facebook had only 100 employees monitoring the activities of its 600 million users.

At the hearing, Facebook Chief Technology Officer Bret Taylor said Facebook shuts down the accounts of people found to be lying about their age. But he acknowledged that Facebook depended on other users to report underage users.

The Consumers Union urged Facebook to be more “diligent and effective” at safeguarding the millions of minors who frequent the site. It suggested a few ways to do that: make minors’ default privacy setting one that facilitates sharing with “friends only” instead of “friends of friends;” for the average user, that amounts to nearly 17,000 people. And institute an “eraser button” that users can click to delete embarrassing information posted on the site when they were underage.

An eraser button? Should it actually be created, many adults will likely lobby to use it too.

Why are moms dressing like their teen daughters?

When Raquel Alderman, 43, picked up a medium-size tank top in Hollister while shopping with her 14-year-old daughter, Olivia, she said she didn't intend to mimic her daughter's style.

The solid-color tank top was in Alderman's size and had no visible Hollister branding, so she said she saw no harm in purchasing it for herself. But Olivia wasn't having it.

"Mom, you are not shopping at Hollister!" Olivia remembered saying to her mother. "Moms don't shop at Hollister. You are too old for this store. OMG, I can't believe you are buying something here."

Olivia said she didn't want the Hollister employees to think her mom was buying it for herself -- she wanted to spare her any possible humiliation -- so the teenager took it to the register and carried the bag out of the store. She told Alderman she was a "PTA mom" and wanted to know why she trying to "relive her teenage years."

Shocked, Alderman explained that the tank top fit her and she liked it -- that was it. But Olivia said it wasn't what she was buying -- it was the fact that her mother was shopping in "her" store.

Alderman contributed a post about the shopping experience on Raising Teens, a blog maintained by close friend Cindy Goodman.

At the end of her post, Alderman raises a question many mothers of teenage daughters ask themselves: "Are we trying to feel or look younger by wearing their clothes or is this just our teenagers feeling embarrassed by their mom shopping in their store?"

According to a new study released by Temple University, moms are turning into "consumer doppelgängers" of their children, shopping in teen stores so as to mimic the identities of their teenage daughters.

The study began as a way to see if daughters were trying to copy their mothers, and after questioning 343 mother-daughter pairs, professor Ayalla Ruvio and her team discovered the opposite was true.

The mothers, averaging an age of 44, and the daughters, around age 16, were quizzed about their shopping habits. And this phenomenon, emerging over the last five years, is the last thing teen daughters want.

"I don't feel like I should be forbidden from dressing fashionably and looking good just because I'm a 30-something mom"
--Christina McMenemy

"They're in a stage where all they want to show is how independent they are and how they construct their own separate unique image that does not look like their mother," Ruvio said. "And then the mother goes out and copies them."

But mothers aren't dressing like their daughters to look like teenagers, she said. Cognitive age is more important than actual age -- women feel younger, so they want to project that personality with their clothing, according to Ruvio.

Ruvio suggests that another motivation behind this behavior is a lack of time to keep up with fashion trends on mothers' parts. Instead, they look to their daughters as fashionable role models and mimic the styles.

"We live in a society that one of the main values is to look younger," Ruvio said. "Most of these women have kids, work and they don't have time to monitor the market and see what is cool and hip, so they basically take a shortcut. Through their teenage daughters, they know they're safe."

Roni Cohen-Sandler, a psychologist specializing in mother-daughter relationships, warns against this phenomenon and the potential effects it can have on adolescent development. She said she believes it inspires a feeling of competition in what is supposed to be a supportive relationship.

"It gives teen girls an unfortunate message about how the mom feels about herself, her age and her own insecurities about appearance," she said. "That's a message that has me very concerned: It's a youth-worshipping philosophy and suggests that the mom isn't comfortable with getting older."

Christina McMenemy, a mother of two young children, has battled the age-appropriate-fashion question. After losing 80 pounds, the 35-year-old said she wanted to show off what she's accomplished, and not with a miniskirt or cutoff shirt, but a ruffled shirt. McMenemy went to Kohl's and accidentally wandered into the juniors' department after spying a top she liked. McMenemy said a woman in her 20s gave her a hateful look.

"Let your teenage daughters look cute, but you want to look sophisticated and elegant" 
--Tina Adams, owner of Wardrobe Consulting and Signature Services

"I don't feel like I should be forbidden from dressing fashionably and looking good just because I'm a 30-something mom," McMenemy said. "I don't see any age limits listed on the labels. Now that I've lost the weight, I really enjoy finding pretty clothing because it reminds me to appreciate the body I've got and all of the work I've put into it at this point."

McMenemy said she believes that society puts mothers at a crossroads. You can be the good, frumpy mom who cares more about her kids than what she should be wearing, or the mom who is more fashionable and therefore must be more into her needs than her children's.

But McMenemy said she doesn't want to dress like a teenager -- she wants to feel good about her appearance and wear what makes her happy.

There is a difference between looking good and looking "cute," according to Tina Adams, who owns Wardrobe Consulting and Signature Services, LLC. She advises mothers and daughters on their wardrobe and how to dress appropriately befitting their age. The biggest conflict Adams encounters is telling women they can look fabulous without dressing like a teenager.

"We try to tell them, 'Do you really want to look cute?' " Adams said. "Let your teenage daughters look cute, but you want to look sophisticated and elegant."

To achieve that look, Adams suggests skipping the juniors' department's low-rise jeans and finding a pair of nice midrise boot-cut jeans (read: not "mom jeans"). Also, a dress with a cinched-in waist, V-neck shirt or a pencil skirt are all key pieces to a sophisticated wardrobe that showcases maturity and femininity. Shopping in the juniors' department can often result in ill-fitting clothes because of the sizing divide.

Cohen-Sandler, the psychologist, has heard from many of her clients that there is nothing a teenage daughter enjoys hearing more than, "Can you help me find something to wear?" They don't want their mothers to be unfashionable, but they don't want to dress like twins, either, she said.

Jennifer Gray and her daughter, Shaughnessy Chow-Domos, 18, own a boutique together in Vancouver, British Columbia, calledJennyfleur Loves... . Their store caters to a wide range of women, from age 13 to 70. Mothers and daughters alike can find trends they love because Gray and Chow-Domos purchase their favorite items for the store. The two also share clothes, including leather jackets and designer finds they buy to borrow from one another.

But recognizing their age differences, both said they know what they can share and what to avoid. Each has their own style. Shopping together remains one of their favorite activities, and they don't just look out for themselves, they said.

"I don't think I've ever met anyone that can shop like I do, except for Shaughnessy," Gray said. "We're perfect shopping partners. We'll go into a store and grab a stack of clothes for each other while we're shopping for ourselves."

This is exactly the mother-daughter bond that Cohen-Sandler said she fears will disappear if the consumer doppelgänger trend continues. Teenage girls regard "their" stores with ownership; shopping at Hollister and Abercrombie & Fitch at age 14 is like a membership to an exclusive club, one where they don't want Mom shopping.

"Teens lose a source of feedback and information that they really need to count on during these years," Cohen-Sandler said.

"What mothers have to understand is that it's not just a tank top -- it's symbolic of many different things: roles that mothers and daughters have, respecting boundaries between teen and adult worlds, knowing when you make a purchase or wear something, it's going to have an effect on your daughter, the daughter's relationship with peers and you."

But to McMenemy, with a 6-year-old daughter, this study and her experience raise another point entirely. When mothers put themselves after their children and husbands, is dressing how they want to such a crime?

"There's too many stories of fashion making women feel bad about themselves. Why is it so wrong to see something that is fashionable and want to wear it if you do look good in it?" she asked.

However, no matter their stance, every woman interviewed said the same thing -- women look best when they are who they are.