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MELBOURNE BEACH, Fla. — If you can't join ‘em, beat ‘em.
That was the attitude of a Florida preteen whose parents learned he had been using Facebook behind their backs and kicked him off the site.
Zach Marks, 12, said his father hadn't wanted him to create a Facebook account because he could be exposed to adult content. He eventually talked his father into it, though, and spent the first week addicted to his computer.
"Then, I made mistakes. One of my adult friends cursed and posted something inappropriate, and I cursed back. Also, I friend-requested grown ups who I did not know," Zach wrote on his website. "About a day later, my dad found out. He was really mad. I had to deactivate my account. Then, I was really mad."
He couldn't find a kid-friendly social network that interested him, so enlisted the aid of his five brothers and sisters to create the site, called Grom Social. A "grom" is a young surfer, he said, and representative of his and his friends' interests, as well as their potential as individuals.
The three-month-old site has nearly 7,000 users, so far, and gets about 6,000 page views from 2,000 unique visitors a day. The user base has largely found out about the site through word of mouth, according to Darren Marks, Zach's father.
"It has just started to catch on," he told Florida Today. "It's amazing how this is all happening and taking off."
The site is open only to kids and their parents, and adults have to be approved by both before they can join. Darren Marks and his wife, Sarah Marks, let the kids handle the creative side of things while they take care of the business side, including keeping the site's users safe.
The website earned an "A" rating by the Electronic Trust Foundation, an international organization that promotes online safety.
Being safe online isn't only about safety features, according to the Marks family. It's also about parents being aware of what their children are doing. So parents have to approve their children joining the site, and are sent emails about their kids' postings. A filter keeps inappropriate language off the site.
"Some parents may want to let their kids start connecting with friends ... but have legitimate concerns about privacy and age-inappropriate content on mainstream sites like Facebook and Twitter," said Caroline Knorr, parenting editor at Common Sense Media. "That's the space that these kid-friendly sites with strong privacy and safety features can fill."
