Digital Parenting and Safety Blog

Most adolescents and teens can’t imagine a world without Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites. As a parent, you may feel a responsibility to monitor your child’s social media use, and that makes sense.

With the advent of social media and the fact that kids are spending more time on the internet now more than ever, parents need to be extra sure to pay special attention to what their kids are getting into online. In the past, one of the biggest concerns you might have had as a parent dealt with the kind of kids that your child spends a lot of time with. Now, social media sites such as Facebook give kids an outlet that can reach quite literally the majority of the people that your child may know. This can be just fine if your children are trustworthy and responsible with what they share, but some children cross the line, whether it has something to do with sexting, online bullying, or making inappropriate comments.

 If your child has been on Facebook for awhile, chances are that they have run into something on there that you might not agree with as a parent. What is important though is that you are able to instill in your child the knowledge that what they put on the internet is more or less permanently attached to them. There are far too many adults who seem to make this mistake, and it's scary to think that impressionable kids may be even more willing to take their online interactions too far.

 Sexting is one of the more common issues that teens and pre-teens face on the internet. Whether that would be your child sending something sexual in nature, or receiving it. Either way, if it is going on through a social media site, it can be very difficult to catch. Even when kids just had cell phones, parents could, fairly easily, see pictures on the phone or at least check the phone bill to see what unfamiliar numbers might be involved in a large number of texts, or in picture messages. Private messages through social media accounts take this ability away from parents for the most part, unless you have password access to your children's accounts. While there is a reasonable need for privacy, that need is going to be different for your 17 year old as opposed to your 12 year old. In either instance, sexting is cause for concern, especially when dealing with children under the age of consent in your state.

Bullying through online messages can be almost as harmful as sexting, and often, very little, if anything, can be done about it legally. The best thing that you as a parent can do is to communicate to your child that hurtful messages online are the same as saying them to someone's face. If your child is the target of online bullying, try talking to the parents of the people posting the messages. Most parents would be very upset if they knew that their child was contributing to the bullying of another child, and they will usually be the ones who are in the best position to make it stop.

Inappropriate messages, pictures, and comments that your children may be exposed to may require you stepping in and taking action, such as deleting the offending friend from your child's account. Or reporting the user to the website's abuse department. Many people casually share things on their Facebook feeds, these kinds of posts might not be directed at your child, but nonetheless, they will still be able to see them. For younger children, deleting the friend may be the solution, for those who are older, talk with them and let them know how you feel about it.

Social media monitoring is crucial. Parents, you can't turn a blind eye to Facebook. 

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.

This is a blog post from our good friends 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. 

 It used to be, when our kids couldn’t fall asleep at night, there was something horrible and scary keeping them awake.  The boogie monster was in their closet or under their bed.  They just knew it!  The remedy for parents was pretty simple: turn on the lights, show the child there is nothing there, and then it’s “sweet dreams” and back to sleep.  So how do parents intervene when it’s not something scary that’s keeping their kids awake – it’s something they love.

Online reputation is everything to teens, especially when their social lives exist almost entirely online. Much of what teens do and say online is guided by their need for acceptance among their classmates and other peers.  But with the ever-changing nature of the Internet, what happens when a teen’s reputation gets away from them and seems to take on a life of its’ own?

Although Facebook and MySpace might be the sites that first come to mind when I say “social network,” it's really more than just that. Lots of big, popular places that your tween or teens visits frequently are actually social networks, and the same kids safety rules and precautions need to apply.

Hey, parents. Just when you were getting used to this whole Facebook thing – you probably set up a profile, friended your kids, and are loving that you can communicate with all your friends near and far – it turns out that Facebook is becoming... uncool.