Underage & On Facebook
June 26th, 2011 | by Jen |A NSW school whose students participated in a Facebook site used for cyber-bullying has threatened to expel students under 13 who are using the social networking site.
In an email to parents the principal of Northern Beaches Christian School, Stephen Harris, warned that students registered on Facebook and under the social network’s age limit of 13 would have their enrolment reviewed.
Either children had lied about their age or their parents had helped them join Facebook, he said. ”Let me be very clear - it is an immense parenting mistake to allow for either to happen,” Mr Harris wrote in the email sent on Tuesday.
Yesterday the Herald reported that thousands of Sydney students from various schools had joined websites on which teenagers had been subjected to malicious sexual slander and cyber-bullying.
The Christian school’s general manager, Alan Schultz, said yesterday that conversations on sites such as Facebook could ”become an Animal Farm-style environment”.
”It’s just complete anarchy and so open then for bullying and all sorts of negative things to happen,” he said.
Having a child’s enrolment reviewed was a ”last resort”, Mr Schultz said.
The Education Department has arranged for police to run a cyber-bullying workshop at a school attended by recent victims. The department also admitted that one of the schools whose students were bullied in the sexual slander postings had received a complaint from a parent earlier this month, but the email was deleted.