Ryan MacMillan

In a shocking, I say, shocking, development today it has been revealed that about a quarter of kids between the ages of 8 and 12 are evading the age restrictions on social networking sites like Bebo, Facebook and (the inexplicably still-popular) MySpace.

Goodness, whoever would have suspected that such a thing would have come to pass? Child lies about age! Scandal! Moral outrage!

Of course, the reccomendation of Tom Illube, chief exec of Garlik, the company who furnish us with this breaking news, is that “Facebook, MySpace and Bebo need to take their own age restriction policies far more seriously to help allay parents’ real fears.”

Or, Tom, parents could take their duties as parents more seriously and teach their kids to use the web responsibly in order to help allay my fear that everytime some tweenwager gives out his phone number online we blame ‘the internet’ rather than said tweenagers level of intelligence.