Kids Safety

In our modern society, social media is one of the most common ways we communicate with one another. This is true for adults and children. With summer break starting, many children will find even more time than usual to spend on their phones, tablets, or computers. Often they are communicating through social media apps. Do we know who they are talking to? Do they know?

As parents, our main goal is to keep our children safe and healthy. This applies to both physical and emotional health. One important way to help them stay safe while using parental controls is to monitor their usage on the Internet. Just like when our children spend time with their friends in real life, we need to know what they are doing and who they are talking to through all of the internet social platforms.

While it is important to give our children some freedom, we still need to know that they are safety rules that can be followed while our kids surf the internet. Giving them clear rules and consequences for their misuse will help them continue to use social media positively.

Teach them social media safety habits. While it is ideal to share this information with them before they get on any social media platform for the first time, that might be difficult. These rules and safety measures will be valuable at any time.

If we stress the importance of these rules and safety habits and reinforce them with a consistent reward/consequence system, we can help our children stay safe online. This also will give us some peace of mind when trusting our kids with the responsibility and privilege of using social media. As connected as kids are today, it can be a full-time job for parents to know everything they’re doing online.

Many kids may seem comfortable with technology and the internet, but you might forget that they’re still learning and may not be prepared to spot the risks and pitfalls of being constantly connected — especially when it comes to using social media. Here are some helpful tips so you and your children can enjoy the internet more safely. Communicate with your kids about social media platform safety

Talk to your kids. Have conversations about how to avoid strangers, how to prevent revealing too much about themselves, and general internet safety. Teach them about some of the safety tips in this article to help them learn about what could be red flags. And encourage them to come to you for guidance when questionable content or situations arise. Social media safety tips for kids and parents to follow.

1. Be your person. Never pretend to be someone that you are not. Be who you are and you will attract the people who will become your real friends.

2. Be nice. Don’t say mean things just because you can hide behind a screen. Your words hurt the same as if you would say them to the person’s face.

3. Think about what you post. Remember that once it is out there it is out there for everyone!

4. Do not add people you don’t know to social media accounts. Having friends and followers is fun but can be dangerous when they are strangers.

5. Never send inappropriate pictures or engage in sexual conversations with peers or strangers. Never. Never. Never.

ALSO – NEVER GIVE OUT YOUR ADDRESS ON SOCIAL MEDIA! Don’t even tell anyone you don’t know what city you live in or what school you go to. Don’t post photos that show your school or give any information about where you live. Try to be as vague as possible about where you live.

Parents can educate themselves about the use of social media. Start by finding out what kind of apps and sites your child is interested in. Read app reviews, age limits, and fine print.

Get a head start, if you don’t have an account on any of these social media sites your child wants to use, get one. Teach yourself the ins and outs about the site, try to limit your child's access to the internet. Make sure you know exactly what they can and cannot do, and decide what they should and shouldn’t do.

Teach your kid about posting on sites. Deleting a post does not mean it’s permanently gone. All their online posts, comments, likes, and shares are a part of their digital footprint. Posting inappropriate content could impact their online reputation. It may not seem like a big deal now, but it could potentially hurt them when they get older and enter college or the job market.

Let your kids know the importance of privacy. Many social media sites request names, dates of birth, school names, and hometown. Teach your children how much personal information is too much information online. And remember that these types of personally-identifying information, if exposed in a data breach, could make them vulnerable to identity theft.

Monitoring your kids’ social media accounts keeps an eye on your child in the real world. It’s smart to be aware of their digital life, too. Here are a few tips for monitoring your child’s social media accounts.

Most apps have an age requirement. Enforce it. Check the privacy setting on apps regularly. Companies often update their privacy policies. Make sure you read the fine print.

Consider using a trusted security suite with parental controls on your child’s device. Enable all safety features that prevent children from accidentally being exposed to inappropriate content online.

Make sure you change the settings on their devices to ask your permission before installing an app. Learn their dialect. Kids have a language of their own when it comes to communicating online. Make sure you know what they’re talking about. Helpful information about social networking sites frequented by teens

Here are some popular social media sites and the facts you should know about them.

1. Instagram Minimum age: 13 years

Users can snap, edit, and share photos and short videos. Privacy settings allow content to be private or public. The platform allows sharing and commenting. As long as the account is private, no one can view or comment on a post. Risks include sharing inappropriate content among friends and sharing location publicly by using the location tags.

2. Whats App Minimum age: 16 years

A widely popular messaging app, Whats-app allows users to send text messages, audio messages, videos, and photos to one or many people with no message limits or fees. It limits access to only those people in your contact list. But people in a group chat who aren’t on your contact list can communicate with you.

3. Snap-chat Minimum age: 13 years

A popular photo-sharing app, Snap-chat lets users share pictures and videos for a preset length of time. Content will self-destruct when that time runs out. But keep in mind, people can still take screenshots and save the content. It gives a false sense of permanent deletion. The Discover feature may allow kids to have access to inappropriate content.

4. Twitter Minimum age: 13 years

A micro-blogging site that has the option to keep ‘tweets’ private or public. It can help teens keep up with their friends and favorite celebrities. Even though Twitter has the option to delete a tweet, the posted content could have been copied or stored.

5. Facebook Minimum age: 13 years

This widely used social media app lets users share pictures, videos, and comments. It also has an instant messaging feature. Facebook helps teens catch up with friends, family and, events.

Social media has a strict policy on safety first. Here are some online safety tips to help your child minimize their exposure to social media platforms like being bullied, sexual predators, etc. Know your network, advise your child never to approve friend requests or add people that they don’t know in real life. Be sure they know never to meet anyone in person that they have only met online.

Beware of impostors. Cat-fishing is a form of cyber-stalking where the user sets up a fake profile and poses as someone else — often as another child — to try to engage in contact with your child. Educate yourself about cat-fishing and cyber-stalking, and then teach your child the red flags to look out for. Some of these include a limited number of photographs that look staged, asking for intimate photos or money, moving away from social media sites that are capable of catching cat-fishing.

Avoid questionnaires. “Free” giveaways and contests, or online quizzes, can be tempting. They can also be phishing scams that will try to trick your children into giving away personal information or to allow hackers to try to inject malware onto their computers.

Educate yourself about phishing scams. If your child wants to enter a contest, review it first and make sure it’s legitimate. Guard your location. Here’s a popular practice: personalizing social media status updates with a live location taken from a mobile device’s GPS. Kids may have fun tagging posts or photos with a location, but parents may not want their child’s precise whereabouts broadcast to the world.

Here’s what you can do. Go into the settings menu on your child’s device and disable location services. This can be done just for specific apps while still allowing maps and other useful tools to access location data.

Watch out for apps within sites. Your kid may want to use games and other third-party apps within social networking sites. But such apps can share or post information by default without you knowing about it. Good ones will state clearly that they’ll never post on your behalf. For lesser-known apps, consider whether you want your child to allow the apps to access social media accounts at all.

Set ground rules for your kids on social media. It’s no secret that teens and preteens are very active on social media, which can make it a challenge for parents to keep an eye on their social media activity. Setting up a few rules may help relieve some of the stress that comes with parenting and social media. Here are a few tips for parents on kids’ internet safety

Keep the computer in a common area of your home — like your living room or kitchen. Have designated areas to use tablets and cell phones. This can help you monitor what sites your child is visiting. Plus, they may be less tempted to visit sites or perform activities they’re not allowed to if you’re nearby.

Only allow your child to access the internet for a limited, set time each day. Homework might be an exception. Social media sites can be a time suck, and you don’t want your child spending all of their free time online.

If your child wants to join a social media site, request that you have access to their account credentials. This can help you check for undesirable activities, such as adding suspicious friends, receiving questionable messages, or posting unkind content.

If your child is an older teen, they may think giving you full access to their account is too invasive. Consider a compromise. Require them to add you as a friend so you can monitor their activities via your account.

Stick with age-appropriate sites. Most social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have an age minimum of 13 years. Some of these sites have additional security settings for minors, as well. Facebook, for example, automatically imposes stricter privacy settings for kids than for adults, so be sure your child is using the correct birth year upon signup. Twitter gives a user the option for an account to be private. In that case, the user approves all following requests.

And don’t forget, always review the privacy settings on your child’s profile. Set parental controls with Norton Security Premium. Here’s a simple way to add an extra layer of online safety: consider signing up for Norton Security Premium. It shows you when your child registers for a social media account from their PC, and the name and age they use on their profile.

A robust security suite can give you insights into your child’s Android mobile device activities, too, letting you choose which apps they can use — and even allowing you to turn off access to Facebook or YouTube via Norton Family Premier parental controls. This way your child has the freedom to safely use the internet.

As a parent, you’ll be able to efficiently supervise your child’s Android device and know when to intervene. Most kids will use the internet eventually. That’s why it’s smart to know the risks and benefits of social media. Your knowledge and supervision can help provide an extra layer of protection when they go online.

Keeping Children Focused While Online Learning During the School Day Can Be a Challenge. Learn about our new School Time feature! Remote learning requires the internet, so pausing the internet on your child’s device is not an option. Norton Family School Time is a control feature to help parents block internet distractions while remote learning is in session. Even though most parents don't have any clue how the internet works, or have emails; they can be engaged by providing group discussions about what is the best way to keep their children safe at all times. Like when you guys have brunch, play dates, book clubs; make this a topic for kids' safety and how we can teach them what to do to stay safe when we ain't around to be there for them. Questions each parent can ask and have frequent discussions with your teenagers, younger kids, meet your children's friends and parents at all times, so that you know what is going on and that your child is safe.

1. How can we keep our kids safe?

2. Discuss what safety means?

3. Ask your child what they are into?

4. Always keep your eyes on the child, no matter who you around (family, friends, etc).