Okay Geek Farm
Facebook and Twitter disabled for Underage Xbox Live users
Ricardo Trejo
If you're not totally into gaming news then you might not know that, currently, there is a public preview (beta) of a couple new updates coming soon to Xbox Live. The most important of these updates include apps for Facebook, Last.Fm, and Twitter. Yes, they're bringing social media to a video game console. Once again, if this is the first you've heard about this then you may not be too big on gaming news.
Anyway, we all know that there are millions of Live users out there, and some are, believe it or not, under the age of 18. That being said Xbox has decided to disable the use of the social networking apps for those not of age - lack of parental controls has been cited as the main issue for this.
To explain this decision Xbox's own Major Nelson wrote this on his blog earlier:
As some of you might be aware, those under the age of 18 are not able to access Twitter, Facebook and Last.fm in our public preview. I want to you let you know that this will remain the case when it launches to the world soon. We made this decision because as it stands now, parents aren’t able to use Family Settings to customize which of these applications their children can access. In order to offer an age-appropriate environment for everyone, we decided to turn off these applications for those Gold members under the age of 18. As expected, this has been a hot topic with the preview users. We want to make sure everyone was aware, however, that the development team is working on an update that gives parents the choice of which social applications their children can access. This means that Xbox LIVE members between the ages of 13 and 17 will be able to use Facebook, Twitter and Last.fm as long as their parents approve. The team hope to roll this out several weeks after launch and I will update you on the exact date as it gets closer.
-Major Nelson
To sum it up: if you're between 13 and 17 then you're going to need parental controls to allow Facebook, Twitter, etc. once the actual system update has launched entirely. And even then you're going to have to wait a little bit longer for the patch to give you the option to do so. As of now, in the beta, there is no way to do this, so those who got it and have a minor's Xbox Live account can't taste the full flavor of the preview. Sorry about that kids.
