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Obama bans daughters from Facebook

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Summary of story from the Daily Mail, December 17, 2011

US president Barack Obama has admitted he has banned his daughters from using Facebook – because he doesn’t want ‘strangers knowing our business’.

He said it ‘does not make much sense’ to put the most private details of his family life on public view, saying, ‘Why would we want to have a whole bunch of people who we don’t know knowing our business?’ .

His elder daughter, Malia, is 13, and just old enough to use Facebook. Her younger sister Sasha is ten.  But Mr Obama said he won’t consider allowing them to join the site until they are both four years older.

His admission seems somewhat ironic, given that he made full use of Facebook and other websites to encourage the young to vote for him in the presidential election – and to raise millions of dollars for his campaign.

As a result, he became known as the ‘First Social Media President’.  His Facebook page – which has 24million ‘likes’ – remains a key part of his ongoing efforts to seek re-election.

  1. Although I don’t have much sympathy for Mr. Obama I agree we should all stop our children from using Facebook. Children and teenagers lack the awareness how the Internet really works and how much they are revealing about themselves and their friends. They also have no idea about how easily these posts can be exploited. Bulling and name-calling, abuse and blatant sexism are all over Facebook and similar sites. What is called “social networking” is no more that luring other people into making fools of themselves at best and becoming victims of abuse at worst. No one needs Facebook to stay in touch, there is email, SMS, Skype.
    Especially Facebook is known for its disregard of data security and privacy, so why people are still using is an absolute mystery to me.

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