Is Facebook Safe? A Review for Parents

Harmful Content 😲

One thing about Facebook is that it’s big. With such a vast and always-expanding platform, moderating the content can prove difficult. Facebook has just about every form of content available — text posts, pictures, long-form videos, reels, comments, likes, reactions, etc. While Meta claims it has content policies and filters in place, harmful content still slips through cracks more often than it should. Many users report coming across overly sexual or violent content, even if their algorithm has no reason to push that based on their previous scrolling behavior.

Predation 🚨

Facebook enables direct messaging, which is the first red flag for potential predation. This, along with group interactions and the push for friend discovery, makes it almost impossible not to interact with a stranger in some way.

Meta has rolled out teen accounts with restrictions on who can message and interact with minors, and limits on certain features for users under 18, but these protections are not foolproof and still rely on teens following rules and parents enabling settings.

Privacy 🔒

Teens don’t often realize how much personal information they display on social media, and Facebook features like location tags, profile details, and status updates only encourage teens to share more than is necessary. Facebook does offer privacy settings to help limit what gets shared, but these have to be actively toggled by the user. Again, many teens aren’t likely to enable these or keep them enabled for long.

Parental Controls ✅

Facebook’s teen accounts offer parents some ability to manage and monitor their child’s Facebook use. But this is limited and falls short when you consider there’s no way for parents to “lock” or prevent changes to these settings after the fact.

Luckily, parents can pair these settings with Bark for a more comprehensive parental control setup! With Bark, parents can:

• Block Facebook entirely, if needed.
• Manage when your child can use Facebook throughout the day.
• Monitor posts on your child’s timeline (texts and images).

So, should my kid download it?

We’d say Facebook is safe for ages 15 and up, as long as parents are aware of the risks and using parental controls in a way that works for their family.