James Delahunty
26 Mar 2011 3:15
It has been reported that Facebook currently kicks about 20,000 underage kids from its service every day.
The minimum age requirement for using the social networking site is 13 years old. Even though Facebook has no way to check up on the actual age of a member, it still manages to remove 20,000 accounts per day of users that appear to have lied about their age to join.
Facebook's chief privacy adviser Mozelle Thompson admits that Facebook's system for identifying and removing accounts held by underage users is "not perfect," but nevertheless, the company is at least doing something to try to uphold the age rule.
The figure sounds like a lot, but it is nothing in comparison to the 600 million and growing users of Facebook. A Pew study that found half of 12 year old's in the United States use social networking sites must also be taken into consideration.
U.S. Senator Al Franken has addressed the issue already, and co-signed a letter to Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg. Franken argues that it should be impossible for underage and teen users of Faacebook to inadvertently share their phone number, home address or other sensitive information publicly where it could be misused.