Facebook's last-week-announced move to change its long-standing privacy policy for underage teenagers, allowing them to make their status updates and photos `public', has been widely criticized by experts familiar with teenage behavior.
The changed privacy policy for underage teenagers - aged between 13 and 17 years - gives the teenagers the option of sharing their status messages, photos and updates with the world, as well as accept `Followers' on the social network.
In simpler terms, Facebook's changed policy implies that the photos and life updates that underage teenagers now post on the Facebook site can be accessed even by those people whom they do not necessarily know.
While Facebook's announcement of the changed privacy policy came with the justification that teenagers "want to be heard" when it comes to "civic engagement, activism, or their thoughts on a new movie," experts opine that though teenagers are tech-savvy, they are still quite vulnerable.
Pointing out that Facebook is apparently expecting teenagers to take 100 percent responsibility for managing their privacy settings and their levels of risk, Claire Lilley - from the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) - said in the UK Mail: "Teenagers aren't always going to be careful about what they post."
Voicing a similar opinion, Harvard Medical School's psychiatry instructor Susan Linn - who is the co-founder and director of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood - told NBC News: "Their (teenagers') judgment is still isn't adult and they're susceptible to manipulation."
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