Keep your teen safe from the threats of social networks

It came, it saw and it conquered, what am I talking about? Well that would be facebook, the social network created by a young inexperienced Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg.

He created this social network with no serious intention and now here it is taking up the position of the number one social network; facebook revolutionizing our method of communication in a way that we couldn’t have imagined even in our wildest dreams sometime back.

Most of the people that own a computer and have an internet connection have an account on facebook; this situation seems harmless at first but if you give it a deep thought you will realize it’s a very dangerous situation and if you don’t provide the children with proper guidance and awareness you are exposing them to a lot of risk.

Many parents think that as long as their children are in the safety of their homes they are not in danger but I am afraid this is an ignorant view, parents have absolutely no idea what their children are doing for hours in front of their laptops, who knows, they are sharing nude pictures with strangers or getting trapped in an online fraud or are being influenced by violent and indecent people etc.

Before you have a panic attack let me reassure you that things can be controlled if you behave as a responsible parent, you can do this by taking keen interest in what your child is doing on the internet, this certainly doesn’t mean you intrude their privacy or start nagging them every second.

What I mean is that you try to understand and learn what your kid enjoys doing on the internet, maybe explore the things yourself on your own laptop to get familiar with your child’s favorite online activity, also try to develop a friendly relationship with your kids so they feel comfortable talking to you, in this case if your kids are facing something peculiar they will inform you therefore giving you a chance to take matters in your hand.

The common threat faced by kids these days is through social networking, we have already established the fact that everyone uses a social network these days so other than our kids there may be dangerous people on the social network, now what can parents do?

Firstly you should make an account on the social network your child is so you can keep a track of your child’s activity, who is he or she interacting, what kind of conversations they are having etc; secondly make it a family experience, talk about what you did on the social network on the dinner table so they are encouraged to share their experiences too.

Recently many families have been a victim to financial frauds because their children’s facebook, twitter or myspeace accounts were hacked, what hackers do is they click on the forgot my password option and guess the answer of the secret question, which normally is, birthday, high school class etc, this information can easily be found and once the account is hacked the hacker messages one of the parent asking for the ATM code and things like this.

To avoid such a situation you must teach your children that they have to keep safe passwords and help them in deciding a secret question. Before your children start using social networks inform them about these dangers and threats and warn them about giving out too much information, tell your children that they should only share a healthy amount of information and not everything.

Most social networks have security settings now, encourage children to make full use of this option, tell them to be very careful about the pictures they share and with whom they share, many children share their pictures with everyone on the social network which puts them in danger of being exposed to child molesters or sex predators, keep strict check on your children’s picture sharing routine and ensure they are being careful about this.

Another very dangerous situation encountered by many teens is when they decide to meet any of their online friends for real, now the problem here is that there is no way of verifying the identity of the person, who knows if it is a thief, molester, kidnapper etc.

Now, if parents know their teen is planning on meeting an online friend don’t discourage them or stop them, encourage your kids but go along with them, tell them about the threats they can face therefore for their own good you will accompany them, once you meet the person if you think he or she is not dangerous you can just roam around and keep a watch on the child.

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