Social Networks and Teens

Kids online behavior in general and social media in particular need to be monitored. I have some serious concerns about kids lying about their age and using sites like Facebook. Here are few things, I believe to be told to young ones before they expose themselves on any social network. 

1. Privacy settings: Being young most of the kids are not aware of privacy and do not know, how to change settings on such websites. Teach them, how to use them.

2. Friends with strangers: Kids are not aware of cyber scams and may easily accept friend requests from strangers. 

3. Exposed to undesired content: Unlike open sea of internet, you may consider social media websites as safe as far as explicit content is concerned but that's not true. There is huge exposure to advertisements, which may detract attention of young kids. Another concern is, young age is of learning and teens are not in a position to differentiate between authentic or fake information. They may believe anything shared online and may propagate that and worst happens when it becomes their source of knowledge.

I have few suggestion which may help. Try to add your kids as a friend or follow them but this may lure them to create multiple and fake identities to avoid encounter with family members. The good thing is to talk with them about the dangers of exposing too much or uncontrolled information online. Secondly, help them develop interest in certain niche, it range from cartoons, programming to entertainment pages. Help them follow some personalities and pages they admire, to have some content on their wall. The goal is to make their social media experience fun and safe at the same time.