My daughter aged 11 wants to be on Facebook as "All of her friends are on it". One of her friends friended my wife and I can see that, indeed many of her friends are on it.

My niece in England, same age, on the other hand doesn't know anyone in her class with Facebook.

I'm disturbed though, that there are publicly available pictures of my daughter online due to the lax security of her friends Facebook setup.

All innocent mind, but some photos of other kids at her school have derogatory comments from other kids.

I'm not planning on giving her access until she's 13 but it wont be long before someone tells her or she figures out to lie about her age.

I'm even thinking of getting Open DNS http://www.opendns.com/ to filter it out, but then the Mrs won't be able to use it.

Discuss...

My daughter is almost 12 and has had facebook for about 12 months. She isn't allowed to be friends with my friends and I have to monitor her account, ie. have her password and check frequently. Same goes for MSN. I know friends of hers that aren't allowed it but sign up with names that are slightly different to their real names to avoid being found by their parents. I am going to trust my daughter until she gives me cause not to.

I noticed that this morning, some of her friends have misspelled their names. Sneaky!

Exactly, I would rather my daughter be open and honest with me. You have to go with your gut though and if you don't feel comfortable with it then you have to stick to your guns.

Facebook is not for kids. Far too many adult topics on there. Facebook should be restricted to 18 years and above.

Why would your wife be friends on Facebook with a kid?

Interesting theory. Shall we stop kids going on the internet, reading newspapers and watching TV????

She did it purely to check out my daughter's friend's site, to see the sort of stuff they post and the stuff their friends post, to confirm whether "everyone has Facebook in my class" and because a friend of wife's said there was a disturbing photo of my daughter on the kids page.

Other than that my wife and I have had a number of friend requests from kids which we always reject.

The thing is, if her mates at school have an iphone, she can access it from there anyway.

I guess you could allow her to have it, set the settings to strict, educate her as best you can and advise her of the potential problems.

Some of the content on Facebook you would never find on TV or in the newspapers and is definitely not for kids. Especially the groups such as 'I need sex', 'Volkswagon sucks c*ck'. There's loads of them. Not to mention that a lot of wall post are of an adult nature.

Would you let your 11 year old read the Penthouse stories or give peadophiles easy access to them?

Not to mention the amount of victimisation and bullying that happens on Facebook.

Internet access should be filtered and monitored by parents using filtering software.

Kids shouldn't have an iPhone either until they can afford to buy one and pay for the bills themselves.

Especially as I am stuck in my Nokia contract for another 18 months, I resent kids having iphones when I cant have them.

A cheapy pay as you go basic phone for youngsters.

I actually agree to some extent, however, kids will be kids and find a way to access it. By allowing MY child to have access I can at least police it in some small way. There is an element of cyber bullying that happens but I keep the lines of communication with MY child open and we talk a lot. Life is all about choices and I am trying to educate my kids to make the right ones. Doesn't always work but by banning something I feel I would be opening myself up to a whole different can of worms.

My daughter can afford to buy one and pay for it herself, she isn't having one though - not until I have one!!

That is restricted to dialling the home, mum/dads phone number only.

A 12 year old cannot legally get a data phone contract with the telcos and the telcos won't provide it without a job.

How is a 12 year old able to afford to pay the monthly phone/data bill (which on iPhones is bloody expensive)?