Kids and teenagers tend to browse social networking sites a lot – it is where they get news, meet new friends and share pictures or videos among other things that they can do in these sites. However, social networking sites prove to make kids and teens vulnerable as they post personal information for the whole internet world to see, making them easy preys for online predators.
Here are some tips that will help in protecting kids and teens when they browse and use social networking sites:
1.Understand the site – you won't know what you're dealing with until you've checked it out for yourself. Read the privacy policy, terms of usage and conduct, find out which kinds of people use the site.
2.Review pages – it would be best if you knew what your child or teen is putting on his/her profile page. Try to look at it objectively – meaning, you don't intrude into their private lives as long as they aren't doing anything wrong. Although if you see something on their pages that are against your rules, talk to them about it and tell them to remove it.
3.Set internet rules – just as you have house rules, you must be clear about setting some internet rules that the kids must abide with, otherwise, they lose their browsing privileges.
4.Don't let kids and teens meet anyone they met online – with all the news we hear about online predators and their young victims, I think this point is clear enough and self-explanatory. We don't want our kids to be the next one to be reported.
5.Private information should remain private – remind your kids and teens not to use their real names, or at the very least, not their full names. They should also know that home addresses, landline numbers, web messenger ids and cellphone numbers must not be publicly seen on their profiles. If possible, they shouldn't be putting those at all.
6.Look for alternatives – there are a lot of social networking sites today, and some offer a good security measure to avoid anything that we don't want to happen. Especially to our children. Advice your kids and teens to set the privacy of their profiles, limiting the views only to people they personally know.
7.Be cautious about media – photographs and personal videos must not give away personal details like addresses, schools and car plates. Be sure to check the pictures and videos that your children are uploading.
8.Emotions should be kept in check – kids, teens especially, tend to post highly-emotional entries on their blogs that some social networking sites provide. Advise them not to do this often as they tend to become more vulnerable to online predators. Warn them about the danger they might be in if they keep posting their personal feelings this way.
9.Use web filters – this can help in keeping your kids and teens away from the bad sites, images, videos and other online materials that they should not be exposed to.
10.Removing profile pages – if all else fails, you can contact the webmasters of the social networking sites your children belong to and ask them to delete your child's profile permanently.
These are just some basic steps on how to protect your kids and teens from the dangers social networking sites may pose. There are other things that a parent can do if they feel that their child really is in danger, but it is always a good idea to apply the necessary precautions to avoid dealing with something bigger and nastier in the future.
Phpfox
(articlebase.com)
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