For years, people have been using Facebook to share the joyous news of expecting a child and, a few months ago, we began testing a feature designed to make that process easier..”
The feature allows the parents to add a due date and even name the child.
It’s been suggested that the change is an attempt to stop people creating profile pages for their unborn children. Facebook’s rules state that all users must be at least 13-years-old.
However, Facebook says it is just one of many new features that the site is always trialling. Earlier this year, Facebook added options for users to say they were ‘in a domestic partnership’ and ‘in a civil union’, in addition to statuses such as ‘married’ and ‘engaged’.
While some see the feature as harmless fun and a way to make it easier for people to share information that they were already making public anyway, some have warned people to be careful.
Gwenn O’Keeffe, author of the book CyberSafe, said: “People need to take a deep breath and live life with a certain amount of privacy and dignity. What if things don’t go right? You don’t want to answer questions from all your Facebook friends.”
Sudden status changes have been known to cause problems for Facebook users. Lauren Booth, Tony Blair’s sister-in-law, had a furious row with her husband after she changed her Facebook relationship status from married to single. She later said it was a rash decision and changed her status back but not before the incident had caused a row
Source: Telegraph News
