Facebook may soon open up for kids under-13 with parental supervision

Washington: Social media website Facebook wants to patent a system, which would allow children to create accounts with parental supervision.

According to Politico, the patent application describes how a child seeking to join Facebook would first have to get a parent's approval through the parent's own Facebook account.

However, parents would then have the option to set privacy controls and to limit and monitor the kinds of content, friends and third-party applications available to the child.

Facebook currently bans children under 13 to create their own account, but CEO Mark Zuckerberg has signaled he's interested in bringing kids into the network.

To expand membership to kids, Facebook would have to comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), a 1998 law that governs what kind of information companies can collect on kids under 13, the report said.

The regulations, which were updated last year, require companies to get verified parental consent before collecting or sharing children's personal information.