Before, teens with Facebook accounts could only share content with friends, friends of friends and specific custom groups. As of Wednesday, teens 13-17 years old will be able to post publicly and gain 'followers' on their profiles, just as anyone over 18 years old has the ability to do so.

Facebook recently blogged saying, "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. 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."

To post publicly, teens will need to manually change their audience preferences on each post to 'public' before sharing. Note that the platform's audience settings will remain the same for all posts for all users, including the newly added teens. Having said that, a secondary reminder will pop up for teens after they choose to post publicly a following time.

Although we agree that younger generations are incredibly tech-savvy, we are curious to see how the recent changes will impact the current Facebook base. Teens naturally gravitate toward social platforms, but with the increase of the ability to share, will this simply add more noise to our already full newsfeeds, or will it simply mean that our community is better connected?

Tellus: How do you think this new freedom for teens will impact Facebook?

-- Samantha