Friend requests are challenging, because kids want to collect friends, they want to collect the number of friends. Many parents feel horrified by the number of "friends" kids have, and at the same time you don't want a child to reject friends, or exclude people. We teach our children from a very young age to include everyone, be aware of other children's feelings, look around you, and so how do we navigate that as they get older, and as they go online. My feeling is you have to give them some leeway. You're going to be sending a mixed message if you say, "Only 'friend' people that you know face to face" and then somebody who may think they're cool, from another school who is a geek, they don't want to "friend." You can't send them the message "Don't 'friend' everybody, but be really nice and don't leave that person out." You have to give them some leeway to figure out who's appropriate to "friend" and who's not appropriate to "friend" and who they feel comfortable with. If you feel like it's turning into a bullying situation, and there is one person that all your child's friends are excluding, that is a different matter; then you may want to talk to your child about including that person at least online, because it's really not that difficult to hit "okay" to a friend button, but I would say don't push your child to friend a whole bunch of people they don't know, or to friend people just because they're going to be left out.