Parents? Attitudes towards Children?s Use of Facebook

As a result of the rapid developments in communication technologies, Internet usage has become widespread with each passing day and an integral part of daily life. Computer and internet as the need of the modern era have an important place in children?s life as well as adults. Especially with the emergence of Facebook in 2004, internet usage began to increase especially among young people and children. Although the individual must be at least thirteen years old to be able to have a profile on Facebook, today many children under the age of thirteen have Facebook profile. According to the results of the research conducted by Telecommunications Communication Presidency (TIB) on the internet usage habits of children shows that 66% of the children use Social Sharing Sites at least once a day1. Results of EU Kids Online Project report related to children's Internet and Facebook in Turkey are as follows2:? 85% of children use Facebook.? 42% of children set their profile to Public on Facebook. Thus their Facebook account can be seen by anyone on or off Facebook.? 9,6% of children says that they encountered with a sad situation on the web, the ratio of parents who says their children encountered with a sad situation on the web is just 4.5%.? 15% of children stated that they visited websites including harmful information.As indicated, Internet technology is an important part of children?s lives as well as adults. It?s a well-known fact that these technologies adversely affect the physical, social and psychological development of children and the importance of the role of parents on children?s online behavior also accepted.This study aims to reveal parents? awareness of, behavior and attitudes toward their children?s use of Facebook. The research sample consists of 11 parents who have at least one child under 13 years and who has a facebook account. Individuals to be included in the sample is determined based on the using snowball sampling method. Semi-structured interviews are conducted with selected parents. Results show that parents feel uneasy about their children?s Facebook usage especially when children get exposed to contents including obscene, political and bad words. All of them know the rule about age limitation to have a Facebook account. And parents think their children spent too much time on Facebook and say that they try to limit and control the time they spent on Facebook.