Underage Play with Facebook

Facebook might have to start checking IDs at the door with a more discerning eye. According to a new survey, 7.5 million profiles on the site are operated by users younger than 13 years old, the minimum age to have a Facebook account.

According to a survey by Consumer Reports, a large majority of these kids on Facebook are under 10, and their parents don't monitor their activity on the site, which leaves them open to threats like cyber bullying or sexual predators.

"Despite Facebook's age requirements, many kids are using the site who shouldn't be," Consumer Reports' technology editor Jeff Fox said. "What's even more troubling was the finding from our survey that indicated that a majority of parents of kids 10 and under seemed largely unconcerned by their children's use of the site."

Facebook has admitted that it's aware of the problem, and earlier this year the company said it removes about 20,000 profiles every day, many of which belong to users that are younger than 13.

Out of 500 million Facebook users worldwide, Consumer Reports says 20 million are under the age of 18. Absent any manner of actually verifying a user's age, kids younger than 13 can simply join the site by providing a false birthday.

Some of the blame for the issue clearly lies with parents. A recent poll conducted by Liberty Mutual's Responsibility Project revealed that 17 percent of parents permit their pre-teen children to have Facebook profiles. It appears parents are becoming less concerned that a significant number of children are active in social media; the figure reported by Liberty Mutual more than doubled in just a year. In 2010, just eight percent of those polled said they allowed their kids to have accounts on sites like Facebook, Twitter, or MySpace.

Back when we reviewed the Nexus S and Android 2.3, one of our only complaints was that gingerbread sorely needed front facing video chat support. Third party video chat clients take time to be updated to support new devices,
and at that point there wasn't a simple solution. It seemed inevitable that Google would leverage existing Google Talk video support to enable video chat not just between phones but also the desktop.

Google today announced just what we've been waiting for. First party video chat support is coming in Android 2.3.4 to Nexus S devices as an OTA update in the next few weeks. Other Android 2.3+ devices will get the update in the future depending on manufacturer OTA update releases.

The update will enable video chat support on devices over 3G, 4G (if your carrier supports it) or WiFi between enabled Android 2.3+ smartphones and tablets, and the desktop Google Talk client.

In the client, a video or voice chat button will appear next to contacts which can then be tapped to initiate the chat. The client will suspend video chat and continue audio as well if the video chat session loses focus in Android, and any text chat recieved will be superimposed on the ongoing video chat. The interface looks like a slimmed-down version of what we saw in Android 3.0 on the Motorola Xoom.

Google has also provided a short video demonstrating overall functionality.

Maybe Mark S. Zuckerberg should change his name to Winklevoss. The Indianapolis lawyer with nearly the same name as Facebook founder Mark E. Zuckerberg has reportedly been kicked off the social networking site with "identity fraud" cited as the reason.


Meanwhile, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the Harvard alums who keep suing Mark E. Zuckerberg for an ownership stake in the multi-billion dollar company, get to keep their profiles.

"I hope it's all just a misunderstanding on their part," Zuckerberg the lawyer told the Indianapolis Star Wednesday.

"All my friends are upset with me because they think I de-friended them," he said said. "I've had to do a lot of explaining."

It's not the first run-in the bankruptcy attorney has had with Facebook. The 48-year-old Mark S. Zuckerberg told the Star that Facebook demanded a slew of identification papers before giving him a profile two years ago, including his driver's license, birth certificate and Indianapolis Bar Association license.

He's also had to deal with "about 500 friend requests a day," the newspaper reported last year. Not to mention a dozen or so calls a day to his office from Facebook users asking for customer support.

Zuckerberg said he stumbled across his namesake on Google several years ago when the Facebook founder, now 26, was still in high school. Mark S. Zuckerberg was himself a relatively big presence on the Internet at the time. He was named one of Indiana's Top 50 lawyers by Law & Politics and is regarded as a national authority on consumer bankruptcy law.

But now the search engines have little interest in Mark S. Zuckerberg, he told the newspaper. His younger namesake's exploits are splashed across media throughout the world, pushing links to the older Zuckerberg's clippings far down the search rankings.

"I was always on the first page, always number one. Now I'm pages and pages back. This guy is killing me," Mark S. Zuckerberg told the Star last October.

The lawyer is an admirer of Mark E. Zuckerberg's accomplishments, according to the newspaper, even though "[h]e swears [Facebook] ruined his marriage."

Perhaps as a consolation prize, Mark S. Zuckerberg said he once got great service from a Las Vegas reservations desk when he told them his name.

USA Yesterday reported that Mark S. Zuckerberg's Facebook account had been restored and the attorney received an apology from the social networking giant.