Go for Facebook?

I wrote a few weeks (or was it months?) ago regarding our dilemma on whether to let our 11 year old (she was 11 then) join Bebo. With the work I do online, I read and encounter a lot of bullying and stalking of unsuspecting children. My fear that our daughter would fall into this trap has stopped us from letting her join social networking sites like Bebo or Facebook.

Image: Photoxpress

Ms12 was on Club Penguin as we felt that was safe when she was younger but now that she’s getting older, wanting to be part of a site where her friends are is become more and more of an imperative. We don’t want to get pressured into letting her join but we feel that it is time to give her a bit of freedom by letting her communicate her friends through Facebook.

In allowing her this, we had a couple of conditions:

• That our daughter would add as a friend in Facebook so we could just monitor what’s going on and see if there’s anyone bullying her.
• That she doesn’t approve any friend requests from people she does not know. If unsure, come to us to verify the identify of the person requesting the ‘friendship.’

We didn’t take this lightly. We took our daughter aside and talked to her about the dangers awaiting her online. We did request that if there’s anything in Facebook that upset her whether it’s friends bullying her or whatever that she comes to us so we can help her fix the issue.

What say you? Are your tween children on Facebook or MySpace yet?