Of the 20 million minors who actively used Facebook in the past year, 7.5 million of them were younger than 13, according to Consumer Reports. Facebook requires users to be at least 13 years old.
Among the minors using Facebook, more than 5 million were age 10 and younger. In its State of the Net survey, Consumer Reports found that these minors’ accounts were largely unsupervised by their parents, exposing them to malware or serious threats such as predators or bullies. The report is featured in the magazine’s June issue and on www.consumerreports.org.
“Many kids are using the site who shouldn’t be,” says Jeff Fox, technology editor for Consumer Reports. “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.”
In a survey reported earlier this year,the magazine found that one-third of U.S. households had experienced a malicious software infection in the previous year.
