Underaged Nonobians?

Seriously, does this seem a little strange to anyone else, even though it's against the signup rules there are still kids on here who actively go around to other members pages and flirt etc.
I'm all fine with a younger audience being on this site but lets just say i've seen a fair few shady people on here (as you all probably have) and it worries me that these kids are using the social half of nonoba and adding MUCH older guys, calling them cute etc so there is obviously no keen parent watching over them :)
I suppose its not that big an issue but the internet can potentially be a dangerous place for young kids to be talking to others on, even with all nonoba's bright fun gushiness we've all seen the "PM me with your number" and "who wanna see me neked on cams?" people on here.

This isnt a "I WANT ACTION" Thread, just what are other peoples views on it?

while i agree, it really falls on the parents of said children to be responsible for their upbringing, including education as to the dangers of the internet.

Still the websites should be doing their parts aswell, some sites put restrictions on younger ages like no private messaging so any conversations they get into have to be public and therefore can be moderated (i.e. no wierdos PM'ing kids and asking for their details)

don't worry, im not takin it that way, it just a discussion ^^, I dont even care if theres anything changed or not. Im just saying im suprised how many kids are on here and are obviously unmoderated by their parents.

Well we can have them it so you can't join if your 13 or under but if we did that we did we just be teaching them youngins that lying get you somewhere. =P

A valuable lesson indeed!

The justification is simply the legal liability and possible bad PR of not doing it.

You just have to realize that there is absolutely no way you can stop people from lying about their age and identity on the internet. If people want it bad enough, they can defeat any age verifictaion systems we put up.

In my experience, the best scenario is where we could have kids and adults playing games together. That way everyone will help watch out for the kids and keep the chat clean and friendly. As soon as you start segregating by age groups you get a lot of crap, only kids and teens together is a bad idea, only kids and the occasional lying preying adult is a really bad idea. Those are scenarios we don't want to end up with.

I also wholeheartedly agree that it's the parents' responsibility to keep their kids safe, and keep them in line, but it's not a perfect world and all parents don't care about what their kids do on the internet. Until something bad happens, and then everything is of course the fault of whatever service the kids were using... Unfortunately, this line of thinking is very popular, just look at the recent bogus actions Facebook and MySpace had to take to "protect their members". It's completely useless, but as an internet service, it's the kind of things you might be forced to do anyway. And we don't want to end up in that spot either.

But lots of kids post their real age, name and even pictures of themselves. Couldn't you do something about that?

Not everyone wants that kind of information known. I'm not endorsing that children should be doing things that they're doing, but I think that it's in the privacy of the player to post their name or not. A lot of people don't even put their real name into sign-up forms on websites. It's a privacy issue. The interwebs are not safe!

I'm sure there is a solution to it. But if websites could check with federal records, I'm sure they would. It's just a privacy thing.

As for kids antagonizing older men and women, and lieing about their age.. Well, it goes the other way around as well. Some older men like kids. It's perverted but it happens. It's the internet, and people have been trying to fix that for years.

As The Internet said (<- Lol.) training starts in the home, and it's not a websites, or its users responsibility to monitor children. It is their parents.

Personally, I think schools should teach about safe internet uses and predators in the early years. Too many problems have sprouted from computer-monitoring-neglect to let things keep going on like this.

I agree with madeinjersey