HOW TO KEEP YOUR TEEN SAFE ON SOCIAL MEDIA

February 11, 2020

HOW TO KEEP YOUR TEEN SAFE ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Make sure your child knows your phone number by heart. Phones can get lost or confiscated and your child needs to know how to contact you.

Teach your child to never use his/her full name in creating an account. Make sure names are generic in name and key biographical data like a birthdate and full address.

Many teens collect followers or even pay for them to increase their popularity among peers.Teach your child only to accept "friend requests" or "follow" people they know personally. It is doubtful that a 15-year old girl would have 1000+ "friends."

Make sure your child knows that anything posted on the internet lasts FOREVER. There is no such thing as a 1 way to permanently delete a posting, picture or video from social media.

Make sure your child knows never to post a nude or racy photo on snapchat or email or even live chat services such as Face Time, as these photos can be recorded via a screen shot or other mechanisms and used for blackmail or to manipulate the teen Into doing something to avoid the photo being circulated.

Monitor your child's accounts by creating your own account for each type of social media your child has. If she has Facebook, you should also have Facebook and be her "friend" so you can see what she is posting and who her "friends" are. Same goes for Twitter, lnstagram and SnapChat. Make sure your teen does not "block" you on these accounts or only allow you partial access.

Know your child's passwords for all her devices. Make this mandatory or you will no longer continue to provide a cell phone, computer or internet privileges.

Make sure your child instructed to never allow location services functions inside games, apps or social media.

Teach your child never to that indicates trouble at home or with a friend such as, "I just ran away" or "I hate my parents." "I hate school" "I want to get out of here." These are the types or messages pimps are looking for so they can quickly become a person to "help."

Turn on the "find my friends" location services and be sure to follow your child's location at all times.

Check the apps on your child's phone and make sure she is not utilizing a location "spoofer" program to trick you into thinking she is at one location, but actually is at another place. Most of these apps have a map or world icon. A google search will list the top options.