Facebook is now allowing teenagers to share their posts on the social network with anyone on the Internet, raising the risks of minors leaving a digital trail that could lead to trouble.
The change announced Wednesday affects Facebook users who list their ages as 13 to 17.
Until now, Facebook users falling within that age group had been limited to sharing information and photos only with their own friends or friends of those friends.
The new policy will give teens the choice of switching their settings so their posts can be accessible to the general public. That option already has been available to adults, including users who are 18 or 19.
As a protective measure, Facebook will warn minors opting to be more open that they are exposing themselves to a broader audience. The caution will repeat before every post, as long as the settings remain on “public.”
The initial privacy settings of teens under 18 will automatically be set so posts are seen only by friends. That’s more restrictive than the previous default setting that allowed teens to distribute their posts to friends of their friends in the network.
In a blog post, Facebook said it decided to revise its privacy rules to make its service more enjoyable for teens and to provide them with a more powerful megaphone when they believe they have an important point to make or a cause to support.
“Teens are among the savviest people using social media, and whether it comes to civic engagement, activism, or their thoughts on a new movie, they want to be heard,” Facebook wrote.
The question remains whether teens understand how sharing their thoughts or pictures of their activities can come back to haunt them, said Kathryn Montgomery, an American University professor of communications who has written a book about how the Internet affects children.
“On the one hand, you want to encourage kids to participate in the digital world, but they are not always very wise about how they do it,” she said. “Teens tend to take more risks and don’t always understand the consequences of their behavior.”
The relaxed standards also may spur teens to spend more time on Facebook instead of other services, such as Snapchat, that are becoming more popular hangouts among younger people. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, though, says that the company’s internal data shows its social network remains a magnet for teens.
Giving people more reasons to habitually visit its social network is important to Facebook because a larger audience helps sell more of the ads that generate most of the Menlo Park, Calif., company’s revenue.
“What this is really about is maximizing the kind of sharing at the heart of Facebook’s business model,” Montgomery said. She worries that unleashing teens to share more about themselves to a general audience will enable advertisers to collect more personal data about minors “who aren’t aware that their movements and interests are under a digital microscope.”
Facebook hasn’t disclosed how many of its nearly 1.2 billon users are teens. The social network was initially limited to college students when Zuckerberg started it in 2004, but he opened the service to a broader audience within a few years.
The teen audience is large enough to give Facebook periodic headaches. As its social network has steadily expanded, Facebook has had to combat sexual predators and bullies who prey upon children.
Facebook doesn’t allow children under 13 to set up accounts on its service but doesn’t have a reliable way to verify users’ ages.
Sean Penn Accuses Academy Awards Of Cowardice At Marrakech Film Festival
Sean Penn on Tuesday blasted the organizers of the Oscars for being cowards who, in effect, limit the kinds of films that can be funded and made.
The 64-year-old actor said at the Marrakech Film Festival that he gets excited about the Academy Awards only on the rare occasion that films he values are nominated.
"The producers of the academy have exercised really extraordinary cowardice when it comes to being part of the world of expression and, in fact, have largely been part of limiting the imagination and limiting different cultural expressions," Penn said at the festival, where he received a career achievement award this week.
"I don't get very excited about what we'll call the Academy Awards," he said, noting exceptions when certain films grace the ceremony, including Sean Baker's " The Florida Project," Walter Salles' "I'm Still Here" and Jacques Audiard's " Emilia Perez. "
Penn's remarks dovetail longstanding criticisms of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for lacking diversity both within the ranks of its members and in terms of the films that they elect to promote and celebrate with awards.
The institution has in recent years tried to adopt more proactive steps to reform and rebrand itself, but has faced criticism for not going far enough to make meaningful changes.
Penn also lauded Iranian-Danish director Ali Abassi and his latest film "The Apprentice" about President Donald Trump. It faced difficulty finding an American distributor in the lead-up to the U.S. election in November.
"It's kind of jaw dropping how afraid this 'business of mavericks' is when they get a great film like that with great, great acting," he said. "They too can be as afraid as a piddly little Republican... Read More