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Social networking sites, chat rooms, virtual worlds and blogs are how pre-teen and teenaged children socialize online; it's important to help your child learn how to navigate these spaces safely. Among the pitfalls that come with online socializing are sharing too much information or posting comments, photos or videos that can damage a reputation or hurt someone's feelings. Applying real-world judgment can help minimize those risks.
Remind children that online actions have consequences.
The words children write and the images they post have consequences offline.
Children should post only what they're comfortable with others seeing.
Some of your child's profile may be seen by a broader audience than you – or they – are comfortable with, even if privacy settings are high. Encourage your child to think about the language they use online and to think before posting pictures and videos or altering photos posted by someone else. Employers, university admissions officers, coaches, teachers and the police may view your child's posts.
Remind children that once they post it, they can't take it back.
Even if you delete the information from a site, you have little control over older versions that may exist on other people's computers and may circulate online.
Tell your children not to impersonate someone else.
Let your children know that it's wrong to create sites, pages or posts that seem to come from someone else – like a teacher, classmate or someone they made up.
Tell children to limit what they share.
Help your children understand what information should stay private.
Tell your children why it's important to keep some things – about themselves, family members and friends – to themselves. Information like tax identification numbers, your street address, phone number and family financial information (like bank account or credit card numbers) is private and should stay that way.
Talk to your teens about avoiding sex talk online.
Research shows that teens who don't talk about sex with strangers online are less likely to come in contact with predators. In fact, researchers have found that predators usually don't pose as children or teens, and most teens who are contacted by adults they don't know find it creepy. Teens should not hesitate to ignore or block them.
Encourage online manners.
Politeness counts.
You teach your children to be polite offline; talk to them about being courteous online as well. Texting may seem fast and impersonal, yet courtesies like pls and ty (for please and thank you) are common text terms.
Tone it down.
Using all caps, long rows of exclamation points or large bolded fonts are the online equivalent of yelling. Most people don't appreciate a rant.
Cc: and Reply all: with care.
Suggest that your children resist the temptation to send a message to everyone on their contact list.
Limit access to your children's profiles.
Use privacy settings.
Many social networking sites and chat rooms have adjustable privacy settings, so you can restrict who has access to your children's profiles. Talk to your children about the importance of these settings and your expectations for who should be allowed to view their profile.
Set high privacy preferences on your children's chat and video-chat accounts as well. Most chat programs allow parents to control whether people on their children's contact list can see their status, including whether they're online. Some chat and email accounts allow parents to determine who can send messages to their children, and block anyone not on the list.
Create a safe screen name.
Encourage your children to think about the impression that screen names can make. A good screen name won't reveal much about how old they are, where they live or their gender. For privacy purposes, your children's screen names should not be the same as their email addresses.
Review your child's friends list.
You may want to limit your children's online 'friends' to people they actually know.
Talk to children about what they're doing online.
Know what your children are doing.
Get to know the social networking sites your children use so you understand their activities. If you're concerned about risky online behavior, you may want to search the social sites they use to see what information they're posting. Are they pretending to be someone else? Try searching by their name, nickname, school, hobbies or community.
Ask your children who they're in touch with online.
Just as you want to know who your children's friends are offline, it's a good idea to know who they're talking to online.
Encourage your children to trust their guts if they have suspicions.
Encourage them to tell you if they feel threatened by someone or uncomfortable because of something online. You can then help them report concerns to the police and to the social networking site. Most of these sites have links for users to report abusive, suspicious or inappropriate behavior.
Reference:
Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Consumer Information (2011, September). Kids and socializing online. Retrieved 29 January 2018 from https://www.consumer.ftc.gov