Should Facebook be Banned

Question

Couple of years ago I wrote a blog on how two worse things happened to humanity - Coke and Facebook. Now researchers have already started seeing effects on our youth. Facebook overuse can lead to psychological disorders in youth Facebook founder Mark Z. who had a non-social teen age now asks to remove minimum age limit on Facebook so children can be on Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg: Facebook minimum age limit should be removed Are you kidding me? I mean facebook make sense for people who live far to connect share photos activities but comon kids? Kids should be playing outside sports hanging out with friends not sitting in a room in-front of a computer. What is your take on this? One group is taking on Facebook and planning to destroy it. Watch this video.

Mahesh Chand · Answer

I am definitely up for educating them. But It gets scary when a mother signs-up an 8 year old son on Facebook. Now she is already addicted to Facebook and now kid is staying in the house chatting with his friend rather than playing outside sports. What an 8 years old can learn from Internet? My son is 8 years old I don't think he would be interested in math. All he wants to do is play with his friends outside. I believe too much Internet can make kids less-social and may affect their physical and mental growth.

Sam Hobbs · Answer

I don't know what the world is like for young people. I am not sure if it is better to protect or to educate. I do know that young people can quickly lose respect if they feel they are treated unfairly and when that happens it becomes very difficult to either protect them or educate them and unfortunately that happens very often.

Mahesh Chand · Answer

Good points. The point I am trying to make is Facebook or any social online addiction is not good for kids and parents and kids don't realize it. Posting from iPad. HTML editor does not work. Lol!

Sam Hobbs · Answer

The law restricts minors from cigarettes alchohol and sex. Right? Wrong; they do it anyway. Computers definitely have practical uses. Many people talk about computers as if they are only good for playing games and communicating about unhealthy things. I hope you are aware of healthy uses for computers. Facebook definitely has practical uses. The challenge is to be able to separate the healthy and the unhealthy. As Vulpes indicates part of the solution is to properly educate young people. When I was young the boys and the girls were kept separately. They were allowed to meet in dances but most of the recreational activities were separate. They could of course meet in classrooms in school. I think however that it would have been better for the church to teach them how to relate as people since when they did get together they did not know how to relate as people; they related as boys and girls. In programming the solution that initially appears top be the easiest is not always the easiest. I however do not have children so my system has not been tested.

Vulpes · Answer

I've always considered social networking sites such as Facebook to be potentially harmful particularly to teenagers and so I think it would be a very bad move to reduce the minimum age of 13 so that even younger children can participate. However there are far worse things available on the internet and trying to ban anything is hopeless unless you can get IPs to agree to block it. The best you can do is to warn people of the dangers of such sites which in the case of teenagers may be difficult.