Facebook says no plans to let under-13s join social network

May 21, 2012 - 15:46 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net - Facebook has outright denied that it will change its rules and officially allow under-13s to join the social network, following a report claiming the opposite, according to The Telegraph.

Simon Milner, head of policy in Britain for Facebook, had been quoted in The Sunday Times as saying Facebook had plans to lift the ban.

He told the paper that the decision to allow children to create profiles was still a very early stage.

However, a Facebook spokesman has outright denied that there are any plans to allow children under the age of 13 to join the site.

They told The Telegraph: “We have no idea how The Sunday Times concluded that we are opening up to under-13s from the conversation Simon Milner had with them. All we have said is what we have been saying for months - that minors on Facebook and the internet is an important issue - and we want to work with the broader industry to look at ways of keeping minors safe. The headline …from the Times is no reflection of that conversation.”

This is in stark contrast to comments made by Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and chief, last May, when he argued that children should be allowed to use the social network. Speaking at a summit on innovation in schools and teaching in Newark, New Jersey, last May, Mr Zuckerberg said that the current age limit would be challenged “at some point”.

Facebook’s usual 13-and over age limit elsewhere is dictated by the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which became Federal Law in America in 1998. However, current UK legislation does not preclude Facebook from being used by under-13s - but the site’s own terms and conditions do. The US is currently reviewing its COPPA legislation. In Spain, only those children 14-and-over are permitted to use Facebook because of national legislation.

Zuckerberg claimed last year that the educational benefits of using Facebook were so great that children should be allowed to use the site. The site currently closes the accounts of 20,000 underage users per day.