On Wednesday, October 16, 2013, Facebook removed the restriction for users under 18 that previously limited who could see their online postings from photos to musings on the world-wide social network.
Facebook said that teenagers would now be able to manually alter the setting and share information with the public.
Before, posts by those who registered their age as less than 18 years old could be viewed only by their friends, and by friends of their friends.
With the new privacy, Facebook said that users under 18 will see a special notice the first couple of times they attempted to post information to the public, reminding the user that the post can be seen by anyone.
Facebook also said that teenage users would now also be allowed to use the "Follow" feature, which lets strangers automatically receive public posts from another user without requiring that the two be connected on the service as mutual friends.
"Teens are among the savviest people using of social media, and whether it comes to civic engagement, activism, or their thoughts on a new movie, they want to be heard," Facebook said in an announcement of the changes.
Despite the announcement, Facebook mentioned that by default, the information that teens share on the over a billion users social media would be accessible to a narrower group of people.
"While only a small fraction of teens using Facebook might choose to post publicly, this update now gives them the choice to share more broadly, just like on other social media services," the company said.
Facebook is under increasing competition for younger users from a new crop of mobile and social services, such as SnapChat and WhatsApp, that have been popular with teen users. Facebook is seen to sacrifice the safety and privacy of teenage users to further its business.
"Teens don't necessarily have good judgment and to the extent that they make themselves visible to the wider public, there's all kind of people - from predators to junk food marketers - who are surveilling Facebook for new kinds of targets," Chester said.
Other social media services also allow teens to share information with the broader public. But Chester said the amount of personal information users had on Facebook was much more extensive than on other social services, where users can create accounts with pseudonyms.
Facebook's Manager of Privacy and Public Policy, Nicky Jackson Colaco, said that the changes would allow teenagers to share information that might benefit from dissemination to a broader audience, such as information about fundraising efforts, or a teen rock band trying to promote an upcoming performance.
The restrictions on teen use of Facebook's private messaging feature will not change, with users under 18 able to receive messages only from their friends and from friends of their friends.
Not long after the change, Facebook has been attacked by children's safety campaigners The changes affect users aged 13-17 who will no longer be limited to sharing content leading some to claim it would expose children to cyber bullying and exploitation.
Anthony Smythe, Managing Director of BeatBullying, criticized Facebook's move, telling that: "We have concerns that this age group can now share information in the public domain. Something they think might not be harmful now may come back to haunt them later. This is a move in the wrong direction."