Children and Social Networking Ten Must-Know Tips for Parents

Children and Social Networking Ten Must-Know Tips for Parents. Social networking is a huge part of all of our lives these days. In New Zealand, there are over 2 million users on Facebook alone. It may be to connect with old friends, keep in touch with existing friends or promoting a business, but social networking sites prove valuable.
Whether it’s Twitter, LinkedIn, Google plus or Facebook, these sites are a powerful tool for networking, and influence our lives daily.

On the other hand, when it comes to young children, we want to make sure that they are safe online and engage in age appropriate sites that will create a positive social networking experience for them.

Our top 10 tips for parents are:

1. Be Realistic. Telling your children they are not going to join a social networking site doesn’t help. They will anyway, and youngsters are signing up to sites as early as 5 years old. Sit with your children and understand where they like going to on the internet, then steer them in a positive direction.
2. Know Where To Look. Use your favourite search engine to find positive sites to keep your kids entertained. A simple search such as ‘children’s social networking’ will return many examples of great sites to keep them busy.
3. Adult Sites are for Adults. Social networking sites such as Facebook are intended for adults, even though the minimum age guide is 13. These sites often contain inappropriate photos, conversations and often collect data to be sold onto advertisers. Exposing young children to these behaviours is unacceptable.
4. The Sooner the Better. Get your kids involved at an early age on ‘kid-friendly’ sites that teach them about internet safety in a positive way. New Zealand has two great sites for this, one being Hector’s World and the other is MiniMonos .
5. Set Time Limits. Draw up a contract or agree on how much time is spent online. Children love boundaries and need to know what they are. Time limits can easily be set using parental software too. Ensure your children still have a healthy dose of outside play as well.
6. Discuss. Discuss with your children about the dangers found on the internet. Explain to them the internet is like a new town, with lots of great streets and avenues. But, like every town there are some alleys and lanes that they want to keep away from.
7. Protect Your Child’s Identity. Speak to your children educating them the importance of protecting their identity online. Let them know they should not divulge information such as their full name, birth date, school, phone number and physical address to anyone they don’t know in person. Go through privacy settings with them online, and empower them by asking them to explain them to you. Tell them to speak to mum, dad or a trusted adult about anything or anyone that makes them feel uncomfortable online.
8. Activate Safety Features. Turn on ‘safe search’ within the popular search engines, to ensure young ones don’t stumble across objectionable material accidentally. Many good parental software products will do this automatically.
9. No Bullying. Make sure your children don’t engage in bullying behaviour. Explain to them the affects that bullying has on the victim, and teach them empathy.

10.Have Fun with Your Kids. There is much creativity, exploring and education to be had online. Sit with your children and go through some of the positive experiences together.