Saturday, November 5, 2011

Minimum Age on Internet


Many sites make the user provide their age. A site that does this is facebook which you technically need to be 13 to use but it is almost impossible to enforce. The lack of being able to enforce this rule is evident because of the many young children that have facebook. It makes sense for sites to have this but it isn't the same as showing your ID at a bar. The only way to really enforce the age requirement would to electronically supply ID such as supplying a passport number or other official document, but this would be pretty high security for a site like facebook. You Tube also makes users provide an age but this is put in place young users can't watch flagged content. Many teens under the age of 18 lie about their age so they can the flagged content. Putting ages on the internet and putting other internet restrictions in place is like trying to control the wild west. The internet is almost impossible to control and that is not going to change anytime soon.