When Should a Student (be Allowed to) Get Facebook?

Two different questions have been on my mind recently.

Firstly…

When should a student get Facebook?

I recall asking my sixth-grade nephew once if he had Facebook. “I don’t need it,” he responded.

That threw me off.

Students at my former school obtained a smartphone and/or an iPad by mid-elementary, and there’s certainly a different age requirement than 13 in China. I say this because a lot of elementary students already have WeChat or QQ (social media platforms with chats, posts, and so much more). I didn’t even stop to consider how one of my 6^th graders recently asked to add me on Facebook. Reflecting on all of that had led me to wrongfully assume that every child I met as young as mid-elementary would desire to connect via social media. Low and behold, every child’s life and context are different. When a child actually wants to get Facebook more than likely varies on lots of factors, many of which we as outsiders to their lives may not know about. (For more on ways we may misunderstand teens and technology, please check out danah boyd’s It’s Complicated.)

I didn’t think of the fact that my nephew was under 13 years old when I asked him either. Thankfully I haven’t met, heard of, or needed to report anyone under 13 using Facebook. This brought me to the following question…

https://goo.gl/images/gdUWnB

When should a student be allowed to get Facebook?

Little did I know about the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), a law passed in 1998 to protect children under 13 from having their personal information available. Thus, Facebook’s age requirement is 13. Most other apps/sites have the same condition while some range lower or higher.

Common Sense Media has much to say about protection and guidelines for social media, along with what is going on at age 13 developmentally. Parents and teachers alike should take heed and stay informed. This will help when striving to understand what pre-teens are going through. It should be strongly suggested for the parent as well to be involved in the child’s life during this time since children lying about how old they are may put peers at risk. (Side note: This would be a great time for adults to also examine our social media habits and behaviors because, as I have discovered in parenting and teaching, I and other adults still have some maturing to do too. Children are NOT alone in this manner.)

All of that makes sense while there are certainly “teachable moments” to be learned earlier in life, including those for a six year-old on Snapchat. But…can not the parent help guide the child in using social media such as Facebook before reaching the age of 13? Can the parent learn from the child? I’m not prompting you to push social media on to your child and lie about his/her age. (There are other ways to justify looking at your phone more than your child.) Don’t misinterpret that. What I’m urging is that we as adults be ready to understand the child, listen to his desires, and most importantly, steer him in the moral way to live before he is 13. The life the child lives offline will undoubtedly determine who he is online.

Our Life at Baishan

Recently, I asked a student to write what life is like while attending our school. This idea came from Pernille Ripp who held a #studentlife challenge back on February 5th. At that time, our school was on break for Chinese New Year. Therefore it was only a matter of time after being back this semester before I could ask a student to describe life from his perspective, from which I would have to post it because most blog sites are blocked here in China. I have left the student anonymous in order to respect his privacy.

This is his story.

Baishan School is a private school in Shazikou, Laoshan District in Qingdao, China. The school shares it’s campus with another school - ISQ, which stands for International School of Qingdao.

Life at Baishan is hard work. My daily routine is to get up at 6:45, and after fussing about, I get down to catch the bus at 7:25.

Our homeroom teacher is one of the most strict teachers in the whole school, and is known to rip entire homework notebooks for lousy writing and make that student re-copy the whole thing again. Yes, the whole thing.

Each class usually takes 40 minutes, unless if the teacher decides that they don’t want to end the class. Usually, this doesn’t happen. But the student scores in Baishan are overall pretty high, and our English is some of the best for Chinese schools in Qingdao. I guess that’s the result of doing 4 ~ 5 hours of homework each day.

Our school also has an excellent Foreign teacher team, they are very professional and teach excellently.

At Baishan, lunch usually consists of homemade style Chinese food. (Which is pretty awful to me.) If you want to eat something else, you have to pay an extra 2000 RMB (Which I think is too much.) to have the option to have Korean food from food window #3.

Life at Baishan may be hard, but an old Chinese saying states “Good students come from strict teachers.”