Facebook allows teens to post using the “Public” option, critics believes its popularity dwindling

Facebook is allowing teens under 18 to post publicly in an effort to stay cool, and despite the risks involved.

The company’s reasoning behind this move is three-pronged in nature: other sites allow kids to do this as well, young celebrities need a voice while more and more teens are getting web-savvy.

Despite the obvious vulnerability that this move creates, Facebook phrases it as providing more protection for its teens, which are a part of the 1.15 billion members that it has. This protection, according to the company, is only allowing posts of members between the age of 13 and 17 to be seen only by friends in the Newsfeed.

This is an important development considering just how many friends of friends can see your posts and in most cases, do not bother to change their privacy settings.

With that said, the real news is to watch out for is the public News Feed now being opened to minors as well.

The means good news for teenage celebrities who can now add followers to their user profile with no need for a separate page. This can result in jobs for child actors as well as attention from record labels for teen musicians, thanks to a strong social media presence.

Critics claim that Facebook is doing this because it is losing its cool with teenagers which the company denies while admitting that mobile-based social networks such as Snapchat.

And it’s probably this that is causing Facebook to make changes such as this one so as stick around.