Safer Social Networking For Kids & Teens

With so many people today creating personal profiles on social networking sites, online predators potentially have tons of personal information at their disposal, and with youths, the majority of their profiles include pictures of themselves. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) and the Department of Justice report that teen girls are particularly at risk, with 70 percent of those youths who were approached or solicited online being girls. Kids & teens need to be savvy about what kinds of things to watch out for when online, and parents need to try to be involved with what their kids are doing online as well.

NCMEC offers some valuable tips for kids, teens and parents for keeping safe on the internet:

• Chat rooms can be dangerous because you don’t necessarily know the true identity of those you are chatting with. Never give up any personal information in a chat room.
• Never agree to meet “face-to-face” with anyone you’ve met in a chat room unless your parent or guardian says it’s ok.
• When you post text and images online, this most often becomes very public information. Search engines keep “cached” information, which means that this info could still be available even after you take it down or delete the site.
• Think about what kind of personal information your posts or photos might contain. Does your school name or team appear in the photo? The name of your local mall?
• Check and use privacy settings on social networking sites, set your posts to private so only people you trust can access your pages, and so comments or posts must be approved by you.
• Don’t post private information about your friends either; you might be putting them at risk.

Things you should report to parents or authorities.

• Anyone who you don’t know who keeps asking you for your personal information photos or videos.
• Anyone who wants to send you obscene materials that contains images of individuals under 18.
• Someone making sexual advances to you online

The internet offers us so many tools that if used wisely can be incredibly useful and fun. Connecting with friends and interacting with communities that share our interests are great benefits of social networking, but kids and parents need to remember that it can also be very dangerous, and you have to remember to keep smart about going online. Check out the NCMEC CyberTipline website for more information on keeping you and your family safe.

Also, check out our post, “Think Before you Post“, for additional tips to help keep your family safe on the internet.