Facebook is giving its teenage users a public voice on the platform. For the first time, beginning Wednesday, users between the ages of 13 and 17 will be able to post publicly and obtain followers of their profiles.
Previously, teens using Facebook were only able to share content with friends, friends of friends and custom groups like “family.” Now, they can choose to share posts to anyone on Facebook, just like users 18 and older.
“Teens are among the savviest people using of social media, and whether it comes to civic engagement, activism, or their thoughts on a new movie, they want to be heard,” Facebook wrote in a blog post. “While only a small fraction of teens using Facebook might choose to post publicly, this update now gives them the choice to share more broadly, just like on other social media services.”
Any teenager wishing to share a status update or post publicly must first manually change the audience setting on his post to “public” before sharing. After doing so, a pop-up explains that the post will be visible to everyone on the site. The post will go live once the user clicks “ok” on this pop-up box, acknowledging he has seen the warning and intends to share publicly.
Facebook’s audience settings remain unchanged from post to post for all users, including teens. For example, if a user shares a post publicly, the audience setting will remain on “public” for the user’s next post. For teens, a second reminder message will pop up if they choose to post publicly the next time around.
Teenagers can also change settings to allow non-friends to follow public posts. Users who choose to follow a teenager will be able to see these public posts, with the exception of posts that have not been shared with them. Teenagers will not be followable automatically, and will need to manually update their settings to enable follows.
A new teenager who join Facebook will have his audience settings automatically set to “friends,” and will need to manually change that setting in order to share with the public.
Wednesday’s update will not impact existing Facebook posts from teens, and it won’t automatically change the audience for any future posts. That must be done manually. The update simply gives teenagers the ability to share publicly, just as they can on other social sites like Twitter.
The new update will begin rolling out slowly to all users starting Wednesday afternoon.
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