Just a pointer to couple of interesting posts by Amy Wang and Marjie Braun Knudsen on kids and Facebook. Facebook's minimum age is 13 (not sure of the science behind that) but both writers suggest, persuasively, that younger kids would likely get lots out of it. That sounds right to me although none of our kids are on Facebook (mostly because I am not sure they are going to use it and can't be bothered setting up accounts). My 8 year old son is on twitter and posts occasionally. However, there I notice that he has picked up some strange followers and so I have had to go in and block them. It is an imperfect way of going about these things but at some point there is going to be a lesson about what such Internet behaviour means and some self-management. I suspect I'll only be really comfortable with that in a few years. For now, Club Penguin works well for social interaction.
