Survey: 90 percent of moms are Facebook friends with their children

By Mike Flacy December 3, 2011

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According to a study from the publisher of Parenting and Babytalk magazines The Parenting Group, nine out of ten moms are friends with their children on Facebook. After talking to over 1,100 mothers, the group discovered that nearly half of the respondents also adjust the security settings on their personal Facebook profiles to make sure the child can’t see inappropriate pictures or video as well as certain status updates. The study also found that a third of mothers with children up to the age of 12 allow the kids to setup an online profile on the social network. Facebook’s internal rules and the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act both prohibit the creation of profiles for children under the age of 13, but it’s difficult to police this rule across 800 million profiles on the social network.

Only 20 percent of the respondents limit Facebook usage to when an adult is present. Approximately 30 percent of mothers only allow the use of social networks after homework has been finished and over half of the mothers place a one hour time limit on Facebook usage each day. Of the 10 percent that are not friends with their child on Facebook, approximately three fourths of that group monitor the child’s page by logging into the social network as someone else. This may include another child’s profile or a fake profile created in order to watch the page. In addition, 77 percent of mothers are Facebook friends with at least one of their child’s friends.

The study also dove into a few questions about smartphone usage. On average, mothers have downloaded about 11 apps for their smartphone, but four of the applications have been for the child to use. Forty percent of moms allow their children to play games on their smartphone each day and 35 percent allow their child to use the smartphone for at least an hour each day.

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Entertainment

Netflix Social lets you share what you watch with Facebook friends

Good news, U.S. Facebook users: Netflix announced today that it is now possible to share what you watch on the video streaming service with your Facebook friends. The new feature, dubbed Netflix Social, is sure to help you discover more great things to watch – at least, that's the idea.
Once you've connected your Facebook profile to Netflix, Netflix Social adds two new rows to the user interface of whichever Netflix app you use, whether that's Xbox 360, PS3, a smartphone or tablet app, or through the Web. The first row includes "Friends' Favorites," videos that received four or five star reviews from your friends. The second, "Watched by Your Friends," simply shows you the videos most recently watched by the people you (presumably) know. In turn, Facebook friends who have also enabled Netflix Social can see the videos you rate highly or just watached.
To add a thin layer of privacy to this video history sharing feature, Netflix only shares the videos you watch with your Facebook friends on Netflix, by default. That is to say, the episode of "Mythbusters" you just watched won't appear on your Facebook profile unless you turn on sharing to Facebook – a separate sharing option – but it will automatically appear in your friends' Netflix accounts. If you do want to share to Facebook, but don't want to share everything, Netflix provides a "Don't Share This" button to keep your "guilty pleasures" hidden.
It might seem slightly odd that this feature is only just now arriving – after all, we've been able to share what we're listening to on Spotify for ages. The cause of the delay was a pesky privacy law called the Video Privacy Protection Act of 1988, which forbade the disclosure of video "rental" histories, and Netflix streaming was roped into the mix. Enacted after a reporter revealed the (tame) video rental history of former Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork, the VPPA was amended in December to allow users to automatically share what they watch on Netflix through social media accounts.
The amended VPPA still includes a few privacy protections. For instance, Netflix is legally required to provide "clear and conspicuous" ways for users to opt out of sharing their video history. Users' opt-in status for Netflix Social will also expire after two years, at which point, users will have to reaffirm that they want to share what they've watched.
To see more about how Netflix Social works, check out the video below:

Social Media

Everything you want to know about the Facebook Timeline

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The Facebook Timeline introduced many new elements to the social networking site. In addition to being a new and interesting visual format for Facebook, there are many privacy implications tied to the new layout. It’s best to think about Timeline as two-fold: how to protect your privacy as well as how to utilize your new creative options.
Here’s a breakdown that will help you best put Timeline to use. You can check out our original Timeline FAQ as well, which is more of an introduction to the basics of Timeline.
Privacy
View as
The best way to truly realize how much you are sharing is to head over to your Timeline and check out the “view as” feature. The gear icon next to you Activity Log link reveals an option to let you view your Timeline as certain users. Check out what it looks like to friends and family. After that, you’ll be more than motivated to head over and make a few custom friends lists and start editing how public your posts are.
Friend lists
We’ve written about the importance of creating custom friends lists more than once, but the Timeline has made this more important than ever. Given the fact that you are able to scroll through time and visit moments you thought were buried in the past, it’s high time you get on board with lists.
For starters, you can use the Smart Lists Facebook has made: your close friends, family, co-workers, and those nearby you. But now you need to dictate what each of those groups can and can’t see. Which means each time you post something or upload new information, you need to check that pull down to determine who you’re sharing with. We’d advise making your close friends list include everyone you generally want to share everything with (which is how it should be) and that way you can best avoid an accidental over-share.
Past post visibility
You should also make sure to head over to your privacy settings and check out the “limit the audience for past posts” section. When Timeline hit, we immediately expressed concern over how this hurt the original Facebook generation—college kids. When the site was specifically tailored to their kind, posting “iffy” content was a little less worrisome. Now that’s not the case. Unfortunately this means that anything you made public in the past is now far easier to find.
The easiest work-around is to head to this category and choose to make all past posts labeled “public” accessible to friends only.
Visuals & content
Taking care of your privacy settings is easily the most important part of the Facebook Timeline, but moving on you can focus on the more creative aspects of the new profile. There’s a lot to be said for the new possibilities the site presents via the Timeline and once you’ve gotten through the much more serious task of locking up your information you can move on to something more fun.
Life events
The easiest way to add your past to your Timeline is via the “life event” link on your page. Sure, you can use the year toggle on the right-hand side of the page, but the auto-scroll fun won’t last forever. A quicker method is to file everything you want on your Timeline under the “life events” icon.
From here you can also categorize easily, filing moments under “Family & Relationships” or “Home & Living,” etc. You can customize these life events as you so choose and send them to the correct date on your Timeline.

There’s something very foreign to creating these events. Up until now, Facebook has revolved around real-time, but now users are being encouraged to tell stories from their past. Dictating in the past tense is entirely new, and it sort of creates two very different experiences within one site. Using the News Feed is real-time sharing with your friends, while using and browsing Timeline is more about cataloging and reminiscing.
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Audio / Video

New U.S. regulations mean Netflix is cleared for Facebook integration

This last summer, before Netflix announced its price hike and earned the ire of customers everywhere as well as making that giant and short-lived misstep called Qwikster, it was making headlines for something else entirely. The video streaming service was speculated to be working on a deep integration with Facebook, which would introduce a whole new level of content sharing, and possibly the media dashboard the social site was rumored to be creating.
However there were some major strings attached, namely in the form of U.S. federal regulations that prevent a company from making its users’ viewing habits public information without exclusive written permission. Because of the Video Privacy Protection Act, Netflix announced in July it would be forced to offer its new Facebook element only to Canadian and South American customers.
But Netflix also said that a new bill, HR2471, would give a go-ahead for Facebook integration if it passed. As long as Netflix users were given the option to opt-out of the social networking features, the service would finally be introduced stateside.
And now the House of Representatives has passed the bill, updating the Video Privacy Protection Act so that it better reflects our changing digital media times (the regulations were originally written to protect consumers’ video store rental histories). The bill has yet to be approved by the U.S. Senate.
If Netflix begins to offer social media integration to U.S. users (which we have to believe it will), customers will have the option to give a one-time consent for Netflix to release their video streaming history to social platforms.
Facebook has been rumored to be preparing a multimedia hub for awhile now, and while it has made a significant push to incorporate music services, there isn’t a real video presence on the site. But if the rumors of a deep Facebook-Netflix partnership are true (CEO Reid Hastings is a recent addition to the Facebook board), then consider the stage set for a launch. The fact the the Open Graph should be just around the corner seems to make the timing even better for Netflix: everyone's eager to get a piece of the new Facebook platform, which gives them unprecedented user access through the new "verb" application format.