Should tweens be on Facebook?

Nobody ever thinks twice about it.

Somebody wants to be my Facebook friend? Sure! Accept! The more friends I have, the more popular I look.

Turns out one of those profiles you just clicked is your friend’s 12-year-old little sister, who just made her Facebook debut by lying about her birthday. She has only 10 Facebook friends, so she sees everything you post.

Yes, that includes the photo of you consuming adult beverages. Yes, that includes the album (really? 60 pictures?) of you kissing your significant other.

Recently, Facebook announced that it was considering allowing children under 13 to legally use its site under extreme parental supervision. Parents would be able to link their accounts to their children’s and control all requests, posts and tags.

“When I was in eighth grade, Facebook wasn’t that relevant,” said Richard Jacobs, a sophomore at Villanova. “To drink or anything at that age was unheard of. Now, my little sister knows three [high school] freshmen girls who are pregnant. Why? What inclination do you have [to have sex] at that age?”

According to a study by the University of Michigan in December 2011, 13% of surveyed 8th graders had drank in the last month. Approximately the same amount have had sex by the age of 15.

Eric Faust, a junior at Penn State, preceded the onset of social networking while he was in middle school. He thinks mature content on Facebook could be a contributing factor to some preteens’ reckless behavior.

“I just said to myself, ‘What the heck are they doing [on Facebook]? Why are they wasting their time?’” Faust said. “It would be better if there were restrictions on kids that age. If we separate them from everyone else, I think everybody wins.”

Adding parental restrictions for preteens would likely result in a de facto “Baby Facebook” for many of these 12-and-unders. Parents won’t let them friend request young adults, so their friends remain mostly their age group.

But there are still two problems.

The first never really disappeared: Would a “Baby Facebook” eventually develop a stigma among preteens that ensures in their illegal transition to regular Facebook? In this day and age, many of these kids are savvier in social media than their parents.

“I really worry that it comes with a false sense of safety,” psychologist Susan Bartell told USA TODAY. “I think too many parents will think their kids are safe on "Baby Facebook" and now they don't have to monitor them.

“And after a month or two of that [children are] going to be like, ‘I'm done with that’ and will start a regular Facebook... and just use a name their parents don’t know.”

There’s really no way Facebook can enforce its terms and conditions beyond virtually checking a box and clicking 'accept.' Forcing more than 900 million members to supply identification could backup Facebook’s approximately 3,500 employees.

The second problem, posed by Faust, is subtler: As “Baby Facebook” would encourage the use of social media at a young age, are preteens losing their ability to communicate personally?

“It’s a lot easier and it’s a lot different talking to someone online than communicating in person,” Faust said. “When we have Facebook and MySpace and Twitter, everything’s less personal. We treat things more freely and probably more inappropriately because we don’t have to deal with the awkwardness that would occur if it were in person.”

That’s a problem, however, which is found in the ideology of social media -- communicate efficiently, not effectively.

It’s deeper than isolating preteens on Facebook.

Dan Norton is a Summer 2012 USA TODAY Collegiate Correspondent. Learn more about him here.

This story originally appeared on the USA TODAY College blog, a news source produced for college students by student journalists. The blog closed in September of 2017.