Protecting Your Children - Social Media

Protecting Your Children - Social Media

The boom in social media has led to the subsequent misuse of innocent social tools by predators and bullies. As a result there is a chance, albeit small that your teenagers photos will fall into the wrong hands.

Of course, you cannot protect them from everything and they will be exposed to things that we would rather they weren’t. The best approach is to teach your children the importance of being safe online. They get driving lessons to protect them on the road; they learn fire safety to keep from getting burned. Teach them Internet safety to protect their future.  Provide Them the Tools
The best thing you can do is provide them the tools to deal with it and let them know the best way that they can protect themselves.

Pseudonyms:

Work with your teen to come up with a good screen name. Pick one that can be identifiable as them and is as unique as they are. Ensure that it’s not a screen name that will haunt their future, many of us still use the same screen names we created twenty years ago, and those names have become as identifiable with us as our given names. They don’t need to put their real information out there.

Privacy Settings:

Ensure that your teens profile and photos aren’t out there for everyone to look at. If their profile isn’t on private then switch it over. This will ensure that only approved friends will see the photos.

Location Settings:

Turn off the Geo-tagging or Location of photos, that way even if a photo gets out to the public, hopefully no one knows where your child is.

Accepting Followers:

If they don’t know who the person is in real life, then they probably shouldn’t accept them as a follower.

Avoid Portraits:

Teens are a vain lot, but try to discourage them from posting photos of themselves or their friends. It there aren’t photos out there, then they can’t slip out.

Talk:

Continue to talk to your children about what they are posting and what they are allowed to post. Encourage them to talk to their friends about appropriate posting and their own privacy settings. Your teen may do everything correctly, but all it takes is a careless friend and that beach photo could end up public.