Facebook and our children... for or against?

Hello everyone! Long time no write!  I wanted to share a conversation I was in at work. The topic was facebook and your kids.  We were discussing when was the proper age to allow a child onto facebook and with what parameters? 

These are some traits that my daughter possesses that allowed us to let her join Facebook, and to a smaller degree make me feel better about the job my wife and I did in raising her.

First of all, my daughter acts like me, (really this is a good thing.......are you done laughing yet?).  By this I mean she listens to her own inner voice.  She isn't swayed by what others may want her to do and she doesn't care what they think of her afterward.  When these situations arise, she doesn't just make a snap judgement one way or another.  She will actually stop and give it some thought to decide the consequences of a yes or no answer.  To me that says maturity and responsibility.  

Now, will she always choose the right answer that we think?  No and we are OK with that, because when we question her on her decision,  she gives us the reasons that she came up with to make up her mind.  Now this next part is the important part.....We listen to her reasons first and then objectively point out any factors that she may not have thought of,  so next time she will make a better choice.  To us this is vital because trust is a two way street.  We want her to feel comfortable coming to us for assistance even on the tough situations.  If you just fly off the handle and do a bunch of screaming at them, then in the future that may try to hide things because "Mom or Dad just won't understand".

As for me I don't really look at it as an age but more of maturity thing.  We allowed our daughter to sign up when she was 13 but the parameters we gave was that she could only friend her friends that were around her age.  This way she will not be exposed to us adults and our humor.  Also we told her we would periodically check her page for content.  Thus far it has worked out well for us. What about you?


Honestly I would love to start a thread on this!  SO all of you readers, wiggle your fingers around to get the blood pumping and comment in with your thoughts, I would love to hear 

them!