A couple of weeks ago I was invited to sit down with some of my fellow bloggers and couple of representatives from Facebook to discuss their safety and privacy strategies. I jumped at the chance.
While my kids are surrounded by social media because of what I do, I have not been all that quick to give them free reign online. They are still young. However thanks the things like Xbox Live my children have been exposed the idea of friends and strangers online and how to interact. It is a frightening world out there online, but you can’t put the genie back in the bottle, so making sure we the parents and our children know as much as we can about social networks like Facebook the better.
Facebook has a minimum age of 13 to have an account. Many younger kids simply fake their age and sign up. After seeing how many of my son’s friends were online (Grade 5), I created an account for him and his sister. I knowingly broke the rules to let my kids go on their site. How many kids sign on without their parents knowing or even understanding the age restrictions and why they are there? The Facebook reps said that the average ‘fake’ age is 24, which drives them crazy since Facebook has privacy and security settings already in place for those 13 to 18 to at least HELP keep our young safer online.
I can’t imagine allowing my kids or teens to be on social networks or social channels without having at least a rudimentary understanding of what and how they worked. Yet judging by the amount of kids with smart phones texting and chatting to their buddies, there MUST be a lot of well-educated parents out there who are totally comfortable with what their kids are doing online. No?
I didn’t think so.
I let my kids on Facebook, because I am on there. My kids are also young enough to be more than happy to friend their parents, grandparents and countless overseas cousins as well as all their classmates. Some of those said classmates thought it cool to friend me too. This makes for careful thought before posting anything on MY Facebook page.
What this has done though is ensure open discussions about what is or is not appropriate for online sharing and also giving me the opportunity to sit with my kids and go through the safety and privacy protocols that Facebook has and make sure they understand that THEY have control of their Facebook world and it is okay to hide statuses, report them or unfriend people. Having them online at this young age has allowed a perfect setting for dialogue that goes beyond their own Facebook lives and helps them understand why someone like Amanda Todd would kill herself and why real life and cyber bullying are so evil.
I am quite impressed with how aware and proactive Facebook is trying to be when it comes to safety and privacy. It is a huge network and there is only so much they can do and so again it is up to us – the users- to make sure we understand exactly what we are doing on that service. I wonder how many people even know THIS exists. Or this.
We all complain when Facebook makes changes, but those changes means they are aware and updating the network based on the metrics they gather from us and those that do file complaints and so on. Right now Facebook is launching their Graph Search. This has caused Facebook to rejig their privacy settings yet again. Look at the little gear lock symbol. This is now a Support Dashboard. It is a quick way to deal with any issues you have from finding out your privacy status to what to do if someone is harassing you. I highly recommend you all go in and check your settings as well as going through all the photos you have or are tagged in and making sure that you are okay with them being searchable. If your kids or teens are on Facebook, this is a golden opportunity to start a dialogue about privacy. I just went through my kids accounts and checked the settings to ensure just ‘friends’ and scoured their photos too. Learn what an Activity Log is now.
Thankfully they are not yet at the boozy frat party age yet and THANK GOD Facebook showed up AFTER my boozy years were long done.
Facebook is doing a lot to give us control over our online lives. Do you manage your Friend lists? Your friends can be categorized in these ‘smart’ lists – Family, Friends, Close Friends, and Acquaintances and so on. Each category allows for a different level of privacy. Personally I can’t even keep up my Twitter lists, but I can imagine that teens and tweens would be all over this feature. And speaking of tweens. Facebook encourages us to report inappropriate behavior and wants you to take action. Action can be blocking someone, reporting someone or going to a third party OUTSIDE of the online world. Make sure your children understand this concept.
Empower your children, no matter their age, with the knowledge and strength to understand social networking. Even if you have no interest in the idea yourself, take the time to learn. Sit down with your kids and ask them to show you how it all works. Ask them about privacy and safety and see if they understand the protocols that are there for them to use to protect themselves. Start talking about it. We need get beyond pink shirts and deal with the REAL world that our children and teens are living in. If you let your child IN to social networking, you need to make sure they know how to get OUT.
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