Facebook Eases Up On Posting Restrictions For Teens

Yesterday, the world seemingly came to a standstill when Facebook went down for a little bit. Some people probably took advantage of the downtime to experience life offline. I honestly did not check Facebook during that time, so I did not experience it firsthand. One thing is for sure: the reaction of users to the downtime is a testament to the social networking giant’s place in our lives today.

Then again, Pew Research found out earlier this year that teens think Facebook is passé. According to the research, teens now prefer Twitter, as Facebook is too full of drama and having to manage their online reputation (via Facebook) is proving to be too much of a hassle. The result? More teens have been turning to Twitter.

Facebook  has been busy doing all sorts of things – trying to entice teens being one of them.

In a move which can only be seen as reaching out to the younger crowd, Facebook has lifted some posting restrictions for teenagers. Before this latest change, Facebook users aged 13 to 17 were not allowed to create public posts. Of course, if you’re older than 17, you might not have known of this issue. If you’re ultra careful about your posting settings, you probably wouldn’t find this an issue as well.

There is some use to being able to create public posts, though, and not having to add people just so they can see your posts. That’s exactly what Facebook has allowed with this most recent change for teenagers’ accounts. The idea is to allow everyone to broadcast posts freely. Just.like.Twitter.

Whether this will make Facebook cool for teens again, we are yet to find out.

In other Facebook-related news, the social network is now allowing gory videos on our newsfeeds – again. This feature was disallowed by Facebook earlier this year, thanks to the advice of watchdogs. Facebook has reverted to its original stance, though: they want users to have the freedom to see (or report) such content.

What do you think about these changes?

[Image via SCMP]