How to keep your kids safe online
Sure, Facebook is a phenomenon. There’s all the gazillions of people who use it, like all the time. And then there’s that movie about it and the newspapers always talk about it and just about everyone you meet asks if you’re on it and mentions how you should be friends. There’s also the horrifying kid issues with it, where college kids, teens and even pre-teens are posting things they just should not post (from innuendos to photos) and how some people are even getting into serious trouble either emotionally or physically from these postings. Things like cyber bullying and online intimidation are real.
Most parents that I’ve met fall into one of two camps: the Facebook is fun and harmless camp or the Facebook will never be allowed in my house camp. Which are you? I’m a Facebook fan and very active member. I love how it allows me to reconnect (just enough) to people from my past and stay involved (just enough) with people in my present. A photo here of an old college buddies new home or a status there of a colleague’s recent promotion is just enough to feel like I’m in touch with my ‘friends.’
My sister let her kids get Facebook profiles the second they turned 13, which is the legal age you must be to have a page per Facebook rules. I thought I would be the cool aunt who befriended them right away so they could have at least a dozen friends. Wow, was I wrong. Within minutes (and I mean less than four) of them minting their new account, they had over 600 friends.
Good grief!
Six Hundred Friends? Who the heck has 600 friends? Well, obviously they couldn’t all be real friends, certainly not BFFs or anything right? They’re not best buds and they don’t even know one another. The goal of most the younger FB’ers is to have lots and lots of friends. I guess it makes them think they are popular? Who knows. But what happens is that a sort of unspoken rule is that you should befriend anyone who your friends have befriended and so on. And you should just blindly accept any friend invitation that comes your way. Hey, the more the merrier, right? Hmmmmmm.
But this is where camp number two steps in. Parents from that group say that this is the exact reason they won’t let their kids have an account. That 600 various folk from who knows where, can’t possibly be a good thing. They fear that these 600 random folk could do something harmful or negative when they have access to the very personal and private information that teens today have a tendency of sharing.
It’s like that old Breck shampoo commercial, you tell two friends and they’ll tell two friends and so on. Friend number 532 may see a picture my niece posts about her vacation and that friend may share the photo because it’s cool with her 600 friends. And one of those 600 friends may not be such a great person who then clicks over to my niece’s profile, finds out where she lives and breaks in.
It’s happened.
It could happen.
So naturally you tell your kids to not post bad things online, but how is a cool picture from a vacation bad, right? Where’s the rulebook on what you should and shouldn’t post?
Maybe some of the rules should be:
1. Don’t befriend anyone who is not your real friend, as in someone you know very well and feel you can trust with your house, pet, sibling or iPhone.
2. Do not share any photos or comments or statuses that you would be embarrassed to have on the front page of every newspaper in the world tomorrow morning.
3. Don’t share personal information like your home address or date of birth or sibling’s name on the profile (1. It’s not safe and 2. If you’re only befriending real friends, they already know this information.)
4. Share your vacation pictures and stories AFTER you get home and don’t post how excited you are to be going in 10, 9, 8, days. Again, real friends already know that you’re going.
5. Never, ever, not ever share your password with anyone. Not even your BFFs. Passwords and social security numbers and samples you would give to your doctor are all the same, very private
