SALON

Thursday, Jan 3, 2013 10:09 PM UTC

Tween booted off Facebook starts his own social network

Too young for Facebook, an 11-year-old takes the Internet into his own hands. The rest is Web history

By

Topics: teens, Adolescence, Facebook, social networking, Internet, ,

Tween booted off Facebook starts his own social network (Credit: Grom Social)

Even though he was two years too young to join the social network, 11-year-old Zachary Marks signed up for Facebook, anyway. Less than a week later, this happened:

I spent all my time on the computer chatting with friends. Then, I made mistakes. One of my adult friends cursed and posted something inappropriate, and I cursed back. Also, I friend-requested grownups who I did not know. About a day later, my dad found out. He was really mad. I had to deactivate my account.

And so begins the story of Grom Social, the social networking site for the 15 and under set that Marks founded after being summarily booted from Facebook. Even though there are other kid-friendly networks he could have joined, none really appealed to the preteen. “They were all childish,” he told the “Today” show.

So Marks set out to “create a social networking place for kids that was cool with sick graphics,” according to the About Grom page.  And he did. Seriously. The interface is surprisingly well developed. Sure, it’s neon-bright and overloaded with content and applications for everything from chatting, video-sharing and news to homework help, but kids totally love that kind of sensory assault. (Case in point.)

Marks isn’t doing it alone. There’s a cadre of adults who contributed– as Web designers and childhood education experts. Their credentials are no joke. The site isn’t either.

Besides the team of Grom “helpers,” the only adults allowed to join the site must be parent-approved. Parents also receive regular updates on their child’s online activity via email. And for other foul-mouthed youngsters — like Marks himself — there is a language filter to keep cuss words off the site. Grom currently has more than 7,000 active members, and that number grows every day.

And for those of you who think an 11-year-old founding his own social network so he could stay connected is just a little extreme, consider this: CBS News reported this week that a Sacremento teenager drugged(!) her parents with sedative-laced milkshakes so she could stay online past her Internet curfew. Kids these days, man!

Continue Reading Close

More Katie Mcdonough.

Next Article

Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

What To Read Awards: Top 10 Books of 2012 slide show

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 10
  • 10. "The Guardians" by Sarah Manguso: "Though Sarah Manguso’s 'The Guardians' is specifically about losing a dear friend to suicide, she pries open her intelligent heart to describe our strange, sad modern lives. I think about the small resonating moments of Manguso’s narrative every day." -- M. Rebekah Otto, The Rumpus

  • 9. "Beautiful Ruins" by Jess Walter: "'Beautiful Ruins' leads my list because it's set on the coast of Italy in 1962 and Richard Burton makes an entirely convincing cameo appearance. What more could you want?" -- Maureen Corrigan, NPR's "Fresh Air"

  • 8. "Arcadia" by Lauren Groff: "'Arcadia' captures our painful nostalgia for an idyllic past we never really had." -- Ron Charles, Washington Post

  • 7. "Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn: "When a young wife disappears on the morning of her fifth wedding anniversary, her husband becomes the automatic suspect in this compulsively readable thriller, which is as rich with sardonic humor and social satire as it is unexpected plot twists." -- Marjorie Kehe, Christian Science Monitor

  • 6. "How Should a Person Be" by Sheila Heti: "There was a reason this book was so talked about, and it’s because Heti has tapped into something great." -- Jason Diamond, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

  • 4. TIE "NW" by Zadie Smith and "Far From the Tree" by Andrew Solomon: "Zadie Smith’s 'NW' is going to enter the canon for the sheer audacity of the book’s project." -- Roxane Gay, New York Times "'Far From the Tree' by Andrew Solomon is, to my mind, a life-changing book, one that's capable of overturning long-standing ideas of identity, family and love." -- Laura Miller, Salon

  • 3. "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk" by Ben Fountain: "'Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk' says a lot about where we are today," says Marjorie Kehe of the Christian Science Monitor. "Pretty much the whole point of that novel," adds Time's Lev Grossman.

  • 2. "Bring Up the Bodies" by Hilary Mantel: "Even more accomplished than the preceding novel in this sequence, 'Wolf Hall,' Mantel's new installment in the fictionalized life of Thomas Cromwell -- master secretary and chief fixer to Henry VIII -- is a high-wire act, a feat of novelistic derring-do." -- Laura Miller, Salon

  • 1. "Behind the Beautiful Forevers" by Katherine Boo: "Like the most remarkable literary nonfiction, it reads with the bite of a novel and opens up a corner of the world that most of us know absolutely nothing about. It stuck with me all year." -- Eric Banks, president of the National Book Critics Circle

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 10

Related Videos

More Related Stories

Comments

 1 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username ( profile | log out )

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

From Around the Web

Recommendations