Jul 26, 2011
For kids, social media is now as much a natural part of socializing and learning as the neighborhood playground once was. There is no going back. Many parents of young children already know well the growing pains associated with finding ways to keep themselves in front of their children when it comes to social networking. Parents have a responsibility to be there, both virtually and actually, as their children grow up in the information age; they have to address everything that goes with the territory from privacy and safety to setting reasonable limits and knowing when to back off.
One of the best things you can teach a child about social media is that some sites are protected and private (well, to a certain degree anyway) while others are very public. You might compare a closed, safe site to someone’s own room, where they can go inside and close the door behind them and enjoy privacy. Other sites would be compared to being outside in the front yard, or in a store at the Mall, where everything you do can be easily observed by others, and where people you don’t know can be potentially dangerous and are best avoided.
“A number of social media sites for children restrict them to posting only a selection of pre-approved phrases,” said Simon Dearth. “This prevents them letting out personally identifying information. You should always explore sites yourself first though, because that’s not the default setting for all children’s sites. Many of them require you to activate those controls first.”
Parents should be involved in their kids’ online social lives, just as they are in their “real” lives. Depending on your child’s age and his or her level of maturity, your degree of involvement will change over time. This is natural. If you begin your social parenting with a positive and healthy attitude early in your child’s life, when you are entitled to his or her usernames and passwords, those children are going to be far less likely to shut you out when they are old enough to go it alone. When teenagers and young adults feel comfortable with their parents’ level of trust in them, they keep their parents on their friends lists, and are less likely to hide posts from them, or to be ashamed of their parental affiliation in “public.”
