Did you know Facebook can suspend and delete Facebook accounts of children under 13 years age! Did you create Facebook accounts for your children to let them interact with your family and play Facebook games, then beware that Facebook terms prohibit children less than 13 years from using Facebook in any way, far from having a Facebook account of their own.
I never really cared about this, till my friends children’s account were recently deleted. Why had they created these accounts? Mainly to play Farmville with friends and cousins and now their accounts are deleted/disabled.
Children Facebook Accounts Terms
You might have read earlier reports that nearly 7.5 million Facebook users were younger than 13 years age and more than 5 million were 10 years and under! Here is the official statement of Facebook legal terms under Registration and Account Security
5. You will not use Facebook if you are under 13.
If
you create a new account on Facebook, you always have to enter your
birthday, so Facebook can customize content according to your age.
So what happens if you try to sign in with a date of birth under 13 years. You get this registration error.
And after that whenever you try to visit Facebook.com thereafter (in the same window), they notify you that you are ineligible to register to Facebook and the sign up form does not appear at all.
Report Underage Children
Facebook in fact encourages users to report false profiles of children under 13 years. Facebook even has a report underage children form, to report those who use false date of birth, and the age is verifiable under 13 years age. In fact they strongly recommend parents to contact Facebook with this form.
If parents believe that their underage child has created a Facebook account, they recommend parents follow this link to delete their account. Though the rule is well-known, you would be interested to read why parents help children violate Facebook’s 13+ rule.
So if you want to create Facebook accounts for your children under 13 years, Facebook could delete their Facebook accounts anytime (if they find out or anyone reports it) with no explanation as it is against their terms of service. Facebook takes it terms seriously and does not want underage children to be exposed to unrestricted content online. But the debate is always on if Facebook should allow children under 13 to join Facebook under parental supervision.