While everyone else in the world out there are concern about online safety for children and teenagers, encouraging parents and children to monitor their online presence and telling them to tighten their security, it looks like Facebook has decided to do the exact opposite – allow teenagers below the age of 18 to share things to the public.
Up until last night, users from age 13 to 17 could only post updates to their friends and at most, friends of friends but the new update “now gives them the choice to share more broadly, just like on other social media services”. Just like any other users, teenagers can now change the target audience of their post to public. But that’s not all, on top of that, teens will also be able to turn on Follow, allowing everyone to easily see the public posts that are being shared by these teenagers.
The social network website claims that this will improve the experience for teens on Facebook and while the new feature will come with an extra reminder for these teens before they can share publicly, I guess parents will now have to step up and pay closer attention to what your children are doing online; how many teens actually read the instructions anyway?
