If children under 13 years is on Facebook?

In a perfect, law-abiding world, no child under 13 years of age has a Facebook account. But this world is quite far from being ideal, if tweens of 7.5 million - and younger children - fishing trolling social media giant are a gauge. Now, if Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg gets its way, this already impressive number will explode.

Last week, Zuckerberg said top of the NewSchools Venture Fund in Burlingame, California, that he would like that young children to be allowed to attend his site. Technically, Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA the MCH) prohibited websites that gather data on users access to any person under 13. In reality, however, COPPA is quite ineffective.

Reports of consumers (CR) recently announced the results of an annual survey which concluded that "" more than a third of minors of 20 million who actively used Facebook in the last year"have 13 years of age."

According to Techland of the TIME.com blog, "that number could be low, it is only based on the parents who knew that their minor children were members of Facebook:"

in fact CR found that more than 5 million 7.5 minors about Facebook were as young as "" 10 and less. "."... This is not the worst of it. CR also concluded that minor children using Facebook have been without supervision by parents. The site claims - not wrong - that this exposes them "malware or serious threats like predators or bullies."

Consider other issues raised in the report as: 15% of Facebook users all post "their current location or travel plans", 34% after their date of birth in full, and 21% of the children after the names and images of their children.

What privacy Facebook control, your bastion against all reprehensible things? CR found about "one in five" were not to use them.

Even Zuckerberg insists on the fact that the connection on Facebook - for purposes of educational, natch - is a must for young children. "This will be a struggle take us at some point," CNNMoney quoted him saying. "My philosophy is that, for the education you need start a really, really very young."

(Information on Time.com: Photos: around the world with Facebook)

Zuckerberg, not so remote age no welcome 13 itself, says that Facebook has not begun research on how to open the site for young children and to protect them at the same time. "Because of the restrictions we have not even begun this process, learning" he said. "If they are lifted, then we would begin to learn what works." We take many precautions to ensure that they [the younger children] are safe. ?

Phew. This is reassuring.

Still, it is undeniable that children will simply have the same powers of judgment as adults. Consider, for example, the New Hampshire young crying on Facebook that bin Laden did not first offed his mathematics teacher before being killed. "With hindsight, it is mortifiée that she said that, but it is a child of 13 years," mother of the girl, Kimberly Dell'isola, told a local television station.

(Information on Time.com: Alaina Giordano, Mom stage 4 Cancer, with Out spoke of losing her children)

This is exactly why the Publisher of Consumer Reports is not quite as cavalier as Zuckerberg on little ones friending and marking to their hearts content. Last Friday, the non-profit Consumers Union was concerned that children and adolescents do you really why it is so important to self-censoring which they share with the online world. "We urge Facebook to strengthen its efforts to identify and terminate the accounts of users aged 13 years of age and to implement more effective age-verification methods for users to sign new accounts""," Ioana Rusu, counsel for regulations for consumers Union, wrote in a letter to Zuckerberg.

According to the Los Angeles Times, letter of the Rusu comes on the heels of a congressional hearing to question the safety of minor users of Facebook:

, Chairman of the Committee of Senate Commerce John d. Rockefeller (D - va) said that it was "indefensible" that Facebook had only 100 employees to monitor the activities of its 600 million users.

At the hearing, Facebook Chief Technology Officer Bret Taylor said Facebook closes the accounts of persons recognized to lie about their age. But he acknowledged that Facebook depends on other users noted minor users.

The Union of consumer urges of Facebook is more "diligent and effective" to save the millions of minors who frequent the site. He suggested a few ways to do: make the default privacy minors setting one that facilitates sharing with "friends only" instead of "friends of their friends;" for the average user, which is equivalent to approximately 17 000 people. And to engage in an "eraser" button that users can click to remove embarrassing information posted on the site while they were minors.