FB date of birth change

Facebook Date Of Birth Privacy Photo: Shutterstock

There are a few reasons why a Facebook user might want to change their birth date or hide it on Facebook. The first one is privacy, you are more likely to be the victim of identity fraud if you make it known the exact date of your birthday. The other reason might be if you are a minor (under 18yrs) on Facebook you may not want anyone to know that you are for cyber safety reasons. The third reason is that your teen has lied about their age on Facebook when setting up their account so that it is in fact an adult account (over 18yrs) rather than a minor account, and you may want to correct the birth date on their account so that they are getting the stricter privacy settings that a minor account provides.

What Is A Facebook Minor Account?

There are 2 different types of accounts on Facebook for profiles, an adult account where all the settings are by default public, or a minor account where there are a few extra privacy settings enabled to protect teenagers. Please note a minor account with the extra safety settings is not fail safe, because so many children accept friend requests from people they don’t know sometimes to appear more popular. But having a minor account is preferable. There is more about Adult and Minor accounts and what the difference is here on Facebooks Help page.

Changing or hiding your birth date is relatively simple you just need to go back into your Basic Info area in your or your teens account and change the settings in a few places. NOTE: you can’t lock these settings for your Teen, your child can change them any time, it really has to be an agreement between you and your Teen to keep them private and honest.

Here’s HOW!

Start by navigating away from your “Home” timeline area on Facebook back to your “Profile” Timeline, just click on your profile name top right of your Facebook home page. Then go down to just under your cover picture Click “About”

Scroll down to “Contact And Basic info” in the left menu, go across right to “Basic Information” and hover your cursor far right of your Birth Date and/or Birth Year and click the edit button .

How To Hide Birthdate On Facebook

Here you can change the birth date or set it to “Your Friends” Or “Me Only” to hide it from sight.

How to hide your birthdate on Facebook

Note: You can also only show friends your birth date, (not the year of birth) if you wish them to send you a happy birthday wish on your birth date.

On Minor (under 18yrs) accounts the options are restricted only to friends and friends of friends.
NOTE: many children faked their birth dates to get an account on Facebook before they were 13 yrs of age. So check your child’s birth year on Facebook and be sure it is set correctly for their age, so that they benefit from some extra teen privacy settings.