Schools raise Facebook alerts

West Coast schools are warning parents that young children are being drawn to social networking sites on the internet without realising the dangers.

Some schools are so concerned about primary school age pupils accessing the likes of Facebook they have introduced classes to educate the children and organised parents’ evenings to alert them to the problem, including loss of privacy.
Karoro Learning IT facilitator Eric Martini has already spoken to parents of St Patrick’s Primary School children but he said it was a Coastwide problem.
“We’re trying to educate kids and let parents know what’s going on,” Mr Martini said.
The legal age for Facebook is 13, but it was widely used by primary school-aged children.
He said some children were lying in order to sign up to the sites.
“A lot of parents do not know how the information is easily accessed. Parents really have no idea what kids are doing on here and the potential risks.”
At the same time, children did not realise the consequences of putting their personal information on Facebook. Some risky situations people had discussed were children posting their whereabouts and times on-line. People also did not realise that once they posted private photos on Facebook they became the property of Facebook, and they had no control over their future use. St Patrick’s teacher Jacqui Paterson said they were focusing on the risk of social networking sites and games sites with chat facilities.
“We’re trying to educate them on how to keep themselves safe on the internet.”
Although those sites were banned at school, it was still a problem out of school hours.
“Children are being taught how social networks and games sites are not the place to make friends. It’s really about how to teach kids to use the internet safely.”
Karoro School principal Maureen Truman said they also educated children on cyber safety.
“Our network provider blocks social networking sites and unsuitable sites such as Facebook.
“We do remind everyone that primary school children really shouldn’t have a Facebook account.”
Facebook has almost 250 million users around the world.