Cameron’s Blog

For a while now I have been trying to get onto Facebook, but when I first tried they would not let me join unless I either had a university email address or went to a high school. As home educated student this proved to be a problem, and after looking o the internet I found that the only way to get around it was to either say you go to a local high school or say that you are over 18. So I decided to wait, as I was not comfortable lying about something that would be public. I wrote to Facebook asking if I can use Facebook as a home educated student or not, but I got no reply.

During the months that followed I noticed that almost all the sites I visit on a day to day basis integrate with Facebook in some way, from iusethis to Kongregate and others. About three months after my initial attempt I decided I wanted Facebook, even if I had to lie. I decided to lie about my age as I could choose to only show my day and month of birth, whereas if I lied about my school it would automatically join me into the high schools group, which you cannot unjoin, and will show on your profile page. I decided first to try to sign up without lying just to see if it would work. And it did. Without so much as a warning dialog it let me sign up, log in, and start using it. I went to my profile page to double check that I put the right age, and I was astounded that I had and it had still let me sign up.

I don’t know if it was because of my email to them, or because they have stopped requiring anyone under 18 to be either in high school or university, but I am now on Facebook, without any falsities at all.