Facebook Dumps 20K Underage Users Daily

Facebook kicks 20,000 users under the age of 13 off the site daily, its privacy chief told Australian officials. “There are people who lie,” he said, adding that the site’s methods of catching them aren’t “perfect,” reports Australia’s Daily Telegraph. Almost half of US 12-year-olds use social networks, a Pew study found, while 64% of 13-year-olds and 82% of teens 14 to 17 are on the sites, Fast Company notes.

It’s not just Australia that’s worried about younger users: US lawmakers have also weighed in. Sen. Al Franken wrote in the Huffington Post this month about his concerns, noting that “under Facebook's policy, 13 million users under the age of 18 may be allowed to share their personal information just like adult users. These younger users are the most vulnerable to predators,” so “it should be impossible for them to inadvertently share their phone numbers and home addresses with anyone.” (More Facebook stories.)