Baby faced

The usual Facebook victim? Nah. Varun is a five-year-old from Delhi.

He snuck past Facebooks minimum age policy it encourages those under 13 not to register themselves on the site by lying about his age. He posts I love you messages on his brother Adityas all of six wall and plays Crazy Cabbie every day.

Varun is not alone. On the worlds most popular social networking site,children are giving in to the compulsive tyranny of the status message,learning how to poke friends and hurl sheep even though they are not supposed to be on it in the first place. Here,nine-year-old Jai Singh thinks nothing of blocking his 22-year-old sister from his account because he thinks she will intrude on his privacy. And 12-year-old Sumit Sharma puts down his year of birth as 1990 because it looks really cool. I can act like a grown-up on Facebook without anyone,except my friends,knowing the truth. It is a fun way to meet people and talk about things that older people usually discuss, he says. On his friends list are strangers from the US and the UK.

Not all parents are outraged; they worry about a new addiction but find themselves tagging their children in Facebook photo albums. Some are more indulgent. I was born in 1998 and I have a Facebook account. In fact,my parents got it for me. They told me it is okay to have one, says Richa Shirin,12 years old and a student of Lancers International School in Gurgaon.

Arup Mukherjee,a 13-year-old in Pune,signed up on Facebook a year ago because his father,who works in Saudi Arabia,wanted to chat with him on social networking sites. He went on to discover his entire gang of school friends online. It is really cool for us to post stuff on each others walls,play online games like Texas Holdem Poker,Farmville,Fishville and Mafia Wars and also chat, he says.

The children have their own logic about being online,and shrug off all questions of appropriateness. Why are you asking us about Facebook? We have not done anything wrong,you know. Everyone in my class is on Facebook, says Shirin.

Why shouldnt I be on it? asks 13-year-old Sonia Singh in Pune. I wouldnt want to be the girl in class who is not aware of what is going on in school.

Eight-year-old Gautam Verma doesn8217;t have an account but knows how to get one. I am going to type in that I was born in 1963. Facebook cant see you. Ha ha, he says.

But what use is a networking site to an eight-year-old? Who are his friends? Scooby Doo and SpongeBob SquarePants? It helps me keep in touch with friends. I do not talk to girls in school,but I like chatting with them online. Boys tend to be boring, says Delhi-based 12-year-old Nikhil Singh who created his Facebook profile two years ago. His friends add up to 148 but that is not enough. I want it to reach 500. I do not invite others. I only respond to requests, says Singh,who spends 5-6 hours on the social networking site every day.

For parents,it is a losing battle,and if you cant get your child offline,the best option is to send him a friend request. My son is a Farmville addict. How can I stop him? I keep checking the history to see the sites he browses,the links that he shares. He uses his own laptop,so I can8217;t keep a thorough check. Facebook has become a bribe. He refuses to study without it, says Manu Bhalla from Delhi whose 13-year-old son got an account four years ago. Bhalla knew his son was ineligible for Facebook but did not object. All the kids in his class are on the site,it is nothing new. And if I force him,he will not listen to me, he says.

There is something beguiling about Facebooks fun and games. It is easy to lose sight of the risks involved in letting your child play Farmville and tend to virtual pets. Delhi-based Mili Dewan,mother of two,opened a Facebook account to find old friends and check on her two sons nine and 14. I keep a tab on people they befriend. But I dont dislike Facebook. As children grow up,they lose a lot of friends. Schools change,classes change. It gives them an opportunity to stay in touch, she says. Dewan has put a time limit on FB use,though: 45 minutes on weekdays and an hour on weekends.

Prerna Grover,a 15-year-old in Delhi,opened a Facebook account three years ago by lying about her age. Now,she is officially allowed on the site. A few months ago,her account got hacked. She had her pictures on the site. We somehow accessed the account and I made her delete all her photos, says her worried mother Sangita Grover. I will open a Facebook account soon though these kids can block you easily, she says. Prerna wont say if she would,but assures us that her privacy settings have been fixed.

For Ruchika Sachdeva,principal of the primary section at Lancers,Gurgaon,the casualness with which parents allow their children on a site that has questionable privacy settings is surprising. It is the parents who encourage the children. We cant do much to stop them at home. In school,we try. I dont know why parents dont understand how unsafe it is, she says.

Many parents are realising the benefits of a Facebook vigil. Shobna Adhikari,whose 15-year-old spends time on the site,says she makes sure that Facebook is used only in her presence. I dont necessarily barge into her conversations or sneak a peek into her pictures,but I do monitor her profile from my computer who she is talking to and what are the topics that she discusses with her friends.

Facebook does have an option where you can report an underage user. It promises to review the reported account and take appropriate steps based on its policies. You will not receive a confirmation email when weve taken action,but we do review all reports. If you are reporting a childs account registered under a false date of birth,and the childs age is reasonably verifiable as under 13,we will promptly delete the account, it says.

But with a user base of over 500 million and counting,Facebook may need more than just a write in to us feature to keep children safe.

Names have been changed; with inputs from Vandana Kalra

Somya Lakhani and Rohan Swamy