Under 18? Facebook treats you different!

You must have seen a notice as soon as you logged in to facebook yesterday telling about Improved Privacy Controls.

I visited the privacy settings and Facebook showed a message saying:

Since, You are under 18, we take extra steps to protect your information. Learn More

That learn more link redirected me to a help topic which gave a clear explanation about facebook’s new policy:

Minors (anyone under 18) who use Facebook have a slightly different experience with privacy than adults. Both adults and minors have some basic information (name, profile picture, gender and networks) appear when people navigate to their profile. This information may be accessed by applications that they and their friends use. Adults and minors both appear in search results on Facebook. However, minors do not have public search listings created for them.

The “Everyone” setting works differently for minors than it does for adults. When minors set information like photos or status updates to be visible to “Everyone,” that information is actually only visible to their friends, friends of friends, and people in any verified school or work networks they have joined. The only exceptions are for “Search for me on Facebook” and “Send me friend requests”, where if the minor has set those to Everyone, we respect the Everyone setting.

Link: Controlling how you share [Improved Privacy Controls]

Do you think this move by facebook would be effective and worthy? Do share your views and thoughts in the comments.