Beth Gentrup at Norfolk Junior High in Nebraska is providing seventh-graders Social Network training wheels in the form of an elective course called "Becoming a Cyber Ninja." The course teaches about a wide variety of topics meant to protect online users and promote proper online behavior. This means addressing topics like cyberbullying, stalking, identity theft, and uses of personal information.
Having your kids “constantly connected” is not a new thing. When I was a teenager we had the same addiction to music as modern teens have with social media. My parents used to refer this unconscious state as “plugged in”, which described me as; headphones in and music up so loud that I couldn’t hear the outside world. At the time I loved music so much that I would listen to it all the time, as loud as could, frequently blaring it from my second floor speaker system so loud the entire neighborhood could hear it. I’m fairly certain my thought process at that time was as follows: This music is really good (which it wasn't), but this music is really really good turned up all the way, and because if Ilike it so much, everyone else should hear it too, right? [Cranks volume knob all the way to the right]
Instagram is an application that can be downloaded to several different smartphones and cellular devices. This application is a photo sharing one in which users can take pictures, add special effects, and then share them on several different social media sites with just the click of a button. The photo is then placed out there into the network of friends the users have, both those that have the application themselves and those who do not, resulting in a sharing of moments and memories quickly. The program, however, does not come without dangers. As with any social media sharing entity, the quick expression and release of information is both exciting and dangerous. It is for that reason that parents need to understand the risks and be instagram monitoring vigilantes, especially when it comes to their children that use the application.
Prying Eyes
One of the reasons that Instagram monitoring needs to be taken seriously is because, as with any social media site,
To hear your child tell it, she is the only middle-schooler on the planet without her own social networking account. While Facebook sets the minimum age at 13, there is no realistic way for them to screen out younger children who fudge their ages, and Twitter has no age restrictions in place. For parents in the digital age, it is growing increasingly harder to toe the hard line against no Twitter or Facebook for kids. How can you set reasonable rules regarding the popular sites?
Identify the Issues
What are your prime concerns about allowing your tween or teen online? Are you worried that oversharing of personal, identifiable information might attract the unwelcome attention of online predators? Maybe you are worried that your child could become the target of cyberbullying, or even succumb to peer pressure and join in tormenting a classmate online. Or perhaps you feel that your son or daughter's unblemished reputation could suffer by the posting of unwise photos or videos. All are valid concerns and should be addressed in frank discussions with your child starting early in grade school. Realize that you as the parent are the final arbiter on the issue of allowing access to these networks, and like it or not, your child must abide by your rules. If you have a reasonably mature and responsible child, consider allowing limited, monitored access to these accounts with the understanding that the first questionable post will cause them to be suspended indefinitely.
Learn to Navigate the Networks
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In the current digital age, many families have tween and teenage children who spend significant periods of time on social media websites and mobile devices. While these outlets can be asset to children's social lives, they can also do more harm than good. Many parents are weary of enforcing heavy social media and cell phone monitoring because of the endless arguments that will result. However, doing nothing and letting tweens and teens have complete freedom is not the answer either. How do you find a balance? Consider creating an open environment for communication and compromise in which you and your children can discuss healthy limits and rules. The following tips will help you with this process.
When can a child join Facebook? The minimum age for creating a Facebook account is 13.
The world of parenting has evolved at a rapid pace in the recent past. Though the internet has been around for a few decades now, the access and content of this virtual world has changed drastically. Though we may not want to police our children to the point that they feel they are being virtually "jailed" we are right to set guidelines in this world as we would in the physical world. We don't hesitate to set boundaries about how far our children may roam on their own, and this same rule should apply to the internet.
Here are a few basic tenants to follow in digital parenting:
Children should allow parents assess to all of their internet passwords, which can include email. This is necessary in school, for parents must assess their children's homework through email and class websites. In addition to this, children should not have the freedom to own accounts that their parents cannot view. At some point in their adolescence a parent could revisit this idea, but it is certainly prudent to follow this guideline while a child is in their formative years.
Everything is good in moderation. That first piece of chocolate is delicious, but after the 20th piece you start and feel a little bit sick. A twenty minute jog may be a great idea, but a two hour jog can be torture. This is a concept that can be applied to all walks of life.Online gaming is an area this is definitely applied to. Online games, such as Ben 10 online games and Scooby Doo games, are great for children if played in moderation and used properly. If your child does not commit the following six deadly gaming sins then they will have great fun and you will take another step closer towards appropriate digital parenting.
Social media overshares generally land somewhere on the "enjoyable spectrum" between a hoard of blood-thirsty mosquitoes and a Gilbert Godfrey recording on repeat. In addition to often being crass and irritating, social media overshares can lead to serious crimes and bullying. It’s time to wise up and teach your family proper social media etiquette, it could save more than just a reputation.
Don’t Leave Trails
While it may be tempting to countdown to your school vacation or brag about your weekend trip to the slopes, disclosing any dates or times you may be out of town is basically like slapping a “SITTING DUCK” sign outside your home. Even posting the cliché complaint about long school hours or grueling work schedules can be a tip-off to anyone looking for a mark to loot. Even if you trust everyone on your friend’s list, can you guarantee all of their friends are hundred percent trustworthy? Or, every single person on your list is at a zero percent risk of leaving their account open somewhere?
Bullying and cyberbullying are two of the most serious issues you will face in raising your children. These behaviors pose an immediate threat to your child's safety and if they are not handled swiftly they can cause long-term psychological damage that can affect everything from their personal relationships to their performance in school. Fortunately, parents, educators, and counselors across America are responding to these behaviors with some new and innovative approaches.
Leading the way, the federal government created Stopbullying.gov. Essentially, this is a one-stop shop of tools and resources where parents and educators can search for information that they can use at home, at school, and within their own communities. This fantastic resource provides information on how to recognize bullying, how to respond when it is discovered, and how to prevent it from reoccurring in the future.
While resources such as this have been extremely helpful in providing communities with support and information, some states have decided to take their anti-bullying and anti-cyberbullying efforts even further. This past year, the State of Delaware began considering legislation that would make it mandatory for schools in the state to report bullying and cyberbullying.
Most people frequently hear cases of cyberbullying or sexting gone wrong in the news, but recently, we were reminded that even more intense dangers exist out there on the world wide web. CNN Money did a great piece on this latest digital parenting concern entitled "Pimps hit social networks to recruit underage sex workers." We thought all of our readers needed to know about this latest digital dangers, so we are sharing the article today.
An interesting excerpt:
"It started with a Facebook Friend request....
As part of an on-going blog series that began three weeks ago, we have interviewed some internet safety experts, parenting experts and industry leaders and are pleased to present our findings. Our questions centered around 'digital parenting' and what people thought were the biggest issues regarding this subject.
Today we are featuring responses from our friend Tosin Williams, the founder of The Learning Period, an in-home tutoring service based in Los Angeles, CA.
uKnowKids: How has parenting changed with the introduction of so many digital devices?
Many people have been asking me if there are any laws or legislation in place to govern cyberbullying. I have pulled together a list of the states laws on bullying and what they mean in a short blog post below.
This guest post is from Tina Kehoe, a stay-at-home mom of three wonderful kids and a frequent writer on digital parenting topics.
A little girl named Marie, who happens to be in eighth grade, recently received an anonymous text that reads “we are going to have sex next Friday after the dance. Or else." The little girl trembles in shock and fear as she ponders whether she should go to an authority figure or just live in fearful suspense, wondering if the sender is telling the truth. Another sixth grader in New York is plagued by the school bully, so he retaliates via text that “You and your sisters and mom better watch your backs. My dad has a gun."
We’ve heard quite a bit about how Facebook is a forum for cyberbullying and how the mental health of teens can be affected by it. Added to this is the fact that there are sexual predators out there, looking to prey on children or teens through Facebook. These are issues that have received quite a bit of attention but there are other issues, not currently in the forefront, that can have an equal impact on a child’s life in the long run. It may not occur to your teen to consider these issues but you can help them out with some digital parenting.
One of these issues arises when teens are applying to schools. They may not realize it but admissions officials routinely check out applicants’ Facebook pages nowadays. If they don’t like what they see, it may prejudice them and cost the teen his/her admission to that school. So it’s necessary to consider the teen’s Facebook page as one of the components of the college application, just like the SATs, the academic recommendations and the application essay. In some ways, the Facebook page can even carry more weight because admissions officials feel that they are getting the uncensored version of the story. A student may be able to present himself/herself well in a college application but his/her Facebook page may tell a different story, especially if it goes back a few years.
This is a blog post from Cory Eridon at HubSpot about the newest Facebook feature Graph Search. We thought you all might enjoy! Stay tuned for how this will affect Facebook monitoring and our parental intelligence system.
Well folks, it's the moment we've all been waiting for. Facebook announced its big news today -- the stuff we've all been sitting at the edge of our seats for, the release we've been pontificating about (read what some of our ideas ... and your own were ... about Facebook's big reveal)! So ... what the heck is it?
Well, we were right! Kind of. It's a new search engine called Graph Search! As Facebook puts it, the new search engine, which is
Many parents who took precautions to make sure that their children under 13 didn’t have a Facebook account failed to realize that Instagram was also a social networking site. At first, Instagram just seemed like a photo-sharing app and some parents were even excited that their kids were taking an interest in photography. Soon, they realized that, just like Facebook, Instagram gives you the ability to post comments on photos. And that was where the downward spiral began, with kids posting nasty comments about each other and feeling left out when others posted photos of themselves doing things together.
But this wasn’t all. Like Facebook, Instagram is full of unsavory individuals trying to contact others without knowing them. There have been instances reported of kids being contacted by pedophiles trying to get their hands on photos of young girls. They mask themselves as some type of legitimate business like a radio station running a contest, knowing that this is sure to lure young people.
Social media can be a scary thing for parents. More and more people are joining Facebook and Twitter every day; and many of those people who join these social networks are children and teenagers. Social media has taken the place of the "playground", in that predators no longer need to physically hang out with children to obtain access to them.
In Missouri, one school is taking the steps to inform parents about how to keep their kids safe with social media. Detective Ed Bailey of the Southwest Missouri Cyber Crimes Task Force recently attended parent/teacher conferences at Carl Junction High School to talk to parents about the importance of online safety for their children. Detective Bailey stated that the key is to get kids to understand how much of their personal information needs to be safeguarded at all costs. And since many kids generally operate in an "it will never happen to me" frame of mind, getting the message across is difficult.
FACEBOOK SAFETY ALERT
Shared via Yahoo! News: The latest controversy over who can use your Instagram photos is far from an isolated event.
Facebook's photosharing site Instagram backtracked Tuesday on its new user privacy policy that would have allowed the site to sell users' photos to advertising agencies.
After a huge outcry from Instagram users on both Facebook and Twitter, co-founder Kevin Systrom wrote on the company's blog:
With Snapchat making the headlines a lot the past few weeks, uKnowKids thought it would be very helpful to decode this app for you and show you exactly why using this app as a means to send nude or semi-nude pictures is a bad, bad idea. And why sharing intimate photos in general is never a good idea.
Snapchat is a unique app that lets users take and then send pictures to a contact with a self-destructing timer on them. When the timer runs out (1-10 seconds max), the picture is gone forever. Many tweens and teens think this feature provides security and are using this app as a means to send intimate pictures---
but this is a very, very bad idea. Download our infographic now to find out why.
