Chris Matyszczyk reports on today’s UK version of “It’s for the children:”
Some might imagine that the mere existence of Facebook promotes a certain infantilism.
However, one school principal thinks that there are so many underage kids on Facebook and other social-networking sites that the parents need to face official consequences.
Paul Woodward, the principal of St. Whites School in the Forest of Dean, England, believes that 60 percent of the kids in his school use social networks. The trouble is that his school caters only to children between the ages of 4 and 11. Facebook’s minimum age is 13.
So, as the Daily Mail relates it, he wants to report parents of these kids to child-protection services.
Read more on CNET.
This is a cultural issue and swamping child protective services with such matters is inappropriate and to the detriment of children who are in urgent need of actual protection. It also shows no sense of boundaries for what is the school’s role and what is the parents’ role.