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A Parent’s Guide To Social Media

Walk into any public place and you are likely to be faced with a large cross-section of society all intently gazing at their mobile phone and tap, tap, tapping away. It seems that social media is the cyber playground of both young and old, from pre-teens through to octogenarians and in some cases even older.

Such is the draw of Instant Messenger that the majority of us no longer put pen to paper or even dial our loved ones on the phone. We simply ping them photos and quick updates on what we happen to be thinking, doing or eating at any given moment. In fact, we don’t limit ourselves to discussing the finer details of our intimate lives with close friends and family; the whole world needs to know that we had a fab holiday, the car broke down or that the dog was sick on the rug. There seems to be no filter on our sensibilities when it comes to sharing!

An issue for many parents is that by the time we get to grips with Instagram, Snap Chat or the latest social media platform, our children are at least two technological steps in front of us and once you explore, you soon realise that there are very few barriers preventing our youngsters from sharing all manner of details with relative strangers.

Most of us have quickly realised that there is no easy way to entirely prevent our kids from using social media so the only real policing we can provide is to keep a close eye on their online activity, know how these sites work and give good solid advice on what is permissible and what is not.

Here a few tips on how to regulate and monitor your child’s usage:

  • Firstly, you need to be absolutely sure that your child is mature enough to stick to the rules you set before allowing the freedom to join sites.
  • Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter have a minimum age requirement of 13.
  • Having the Internet activity limited to an open family space allows easier monitoring of the online habits of children. Children are less likely to investigate non-permitted sites when you are in view, but you still need to keep a close watch.
  • Make sure that you discuss internet security in advance – your child needs to know that they should never share personal information about themselves, details of their location, the school they attend or anything else which could be used by external
  • Children need to know that their actions in the cyber-world have real-life consequences and that inappropriate posts will leave a digital footprint forever:
    • They should never use inappropriate language.
    • Must never post pictures that are embarrassing or revealing of either themselves or someone else.
    • Never post false or harmful information about other people and always tell you if anyone posts harmful comments about them. Cyber bullying is a huge problem which can have long-term psychological effects on a youngster.
  • On sites like Facebook, it’s important to stress that privacy settings should be set to private. That way the user can control what is shared and what friends can share about the use. You also need to be aware that Facebook updates appear to change privacy settings randomly so it’s worth rechecking periodically.
  • Make regular checks of the browser history, cookies and cache on the computer to find out the sites that your child has been visiting. By entering the child’s name in a search engine, a parent can easily find out if their child has public profiles on social media sites.
  • Monitoring software such as “Net Nanny” and “Surfie” is available. It gives the parent control over which media sites can be visited, the facility to block chat, monitor friend activity and filter content. It is important to let the child know that these controls will be in place.
  • Embrace technology – if an adult doesn’t understand the world of social media, they won’t be able to properly monitor their child’s online activities.

This is all basic common sense advice which parents, guardians, nannies or carers should be following if their charges are using social media sites. The older the child gets, the more independent they will want to be in their usage and that is when it becomes tricky as you work out how to balance their safety with their growing independence and need for privacy.

Having discussed online safety openly within your family and instilled good social media principles in your child before they get to an age where they become more secretive, they will have a far better understanding of the dangers that are inherent in the cyber world.

March 16, 2018

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