Are you worried about your kids being on facebook? Facebook is a great place for your kids to talk to their friends and to enjoy sharing pictures with their friends and even family members. However with all the great benefits that facebook comes with, you have to be very careful as well. Facebook is also filled with a lot of online predators and this can be very dangerous. Online predators know how to word things right to get kids to give up their personal information and take advantage of them. As parents it is our job to protect our children and sitting down with them to educate them about facebook and the dangerous people that are on facebook. Here are some great facebook safety tips for kids:
- Never place personal information on facebook. Kids need to understand the dangers of listing their school, their address, and other personal information on Facebook. Online predators will browse facebook pages to find out where their potential prey is and it is vital that kids understand that not everyone on facebook is trustworthy. Let them know if one of their friends really need to get their address that they need to call them on the phone for this information.
- Watch out for the pictures that are placed on Facebook. You need to talk to your kids about the type of pictures they post on facebook. Pictures can be used for malicious purposes but it also can be used by online predators to easily find out where you live. Make sure that they are posting appropriate pictures on Facebook and that they are setting their privacy settings to the maximum amount possible in order to prevent other people from gaining access to these pictures.
- Make sure your kids are making their Facebook page private. Show them how to set their account to the maximum privacy settings possible and to even make their page invisible so other people cannot find them on Facebook. This is one of the best ways to ensure that your children will be safe when it comes to online social networking. Be sure to talk to your kids about Facebook posting and how the information that you post is actually displayed in the news feed for everyone else to see.
- Talk to your kids about their online friends and make sure they aren’t accepting all the friend requests that come their way. There are many people that will target young kids and try to get on their facebook pages as their friends so they can take advantage of them. Not only do your kids need to be careful about the people they don’t know, they also need to be concerned about the people they do know. There are other kids out there that come with a lot of drama and concerns and it is very important that they do not accept other kids that will tear down their self-esteem.
- Inform your kids about the facebook wall and how it works. Every time they respond to a comment by their friend or post on their wall, it is now public information. Even if your account is private, anyone will be able to see that you have a facebook account and they can click on pictures you are tagged in along with the comments that are left to see your profile information.
Parents need to sit down and really talk to their kids about facebook and how it can be good and bad. Make sure you have virus software on your computer and that you have also set your computers internet settings to maximum protection in order to keep your kids safe from harmful downloads and other things that may come from facebook.
laura says
ummm i think kid should actually handle this im 12 and i hve i facebook well i only had it for 2 days now but i can connect w/ my friend at all times 🙂