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For the first time, Facebook is allowing teenagers ages 13-17 to have a public voice on the social media platform. Prior to this decision, teens on Facebook were only allowed to share content with friends, friends of friends, and custom groups. According to Facebook, this age group of people are among the savviest users of social media that simply want to be heard. Any teenager that wants to share a status update or post publicly must first manually change the audience setting on his post to "public" before sharing. After doing so, a pop-up explains that the post will be visible to everyone on the site. The post will go live once the user clicks "ok" on this pop-up box, acknowledging he has seen the warning and intends to share publicly. Currently, if a user shares a post publicly, the audience setting will remain on "public" for the user's next post. For teens, a second reminder message will pop up if they choose to post publicly the next time around.
What are some reasons why Facebook decided to make the sudden change? They have been around for nearly 10 years and have always had a large population of teenage users. If the organization had not deemed it as a safe practice in the past, what could have led to this decision? "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." This comment makes it clear that the organization is trying to keep up with competitors in order to keep their teenage population active on Facebook. What are parents' views on this? Would you feel comfortable having your teenager post publicly on the platform? What are some of the repercussions that can arise from this?
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