Social Media Guidelines for Your Children

December 28, 2011 0 Comments

As we discussed in my last article, we decided to allow our oldest (12 years old) to get a Twitter account. You can read the article here: http://teamtaylorplaybook.com/when-should-you-allow-your-children-to-have-a-social-media-account

It was a tough decision, but we took the plunge for a variety of reasons. The questions we want to tackle today is what guidelines did we put in place to keep him safe and to calm our nerves. Making the decision to allow a child to join the world of the Internet can be a tough one, so we felt it would help if we had some sort of restrictions in place.

Social Media Guidelines for Your Children

Let’s get down to business and give you guidelines we set in place for our 12 year in the world of social media. Right now, he is only on Twitter, but these guidelines will apply no matter how many social media outlets we allow him on in the future. And yes, the list will more than likely grow, but here it is as of today.

Full Parental Access to All Accounts

We have full access to our son’s Twitter account. He doesn’t like this very much, but there will be no privacy while under our roof. Full parental access means we can log into his account and check any interactions we feel like it. On Twitter you can DM or Direct Message, which doesn’t show up in your child’s feed, so if you don’t have access to their account they could communicate with people without your knowledge.

We get around this by forcing him to use one email and password for all his accounts. This isn’t a great idea as an adult, but makes it very easy for the parent to gain access to their child’s accounts. In addition, I took it one step further and sync’ed his Twitter account with my phone. Therefore, every interaction that happens comes to my telephone. (In addition, his email account is the same way.) It is better to be safe than sorry.

No Personal Information

If you are going to allow your child into the world of social media, then you must have a few great conversations with them. One of them must be about the dangers lurking in the world in order to keep them aware. During this conversation, they must understand they cannot share any personal information. No sharing of what school they go to, city they live in, their full name, address, not even their middle name. You just never know who is lurking on the other side of those screens.

When Twitter ask for your city, we had our child use Chicago, which let’s people know he is in the Midwest, but doesn’t tell you where he is located.

Speak in Past Tense

Everyone has heard of the stories, true or false, of people who provide their every move through a social media account and end up being robbed as a result. You cannot tell people where you are going to be and at what time. This will allow a predator time to prepare to be at this location and potentially attack your child.

How should you handle this? You must inform your child to speak in past tense. I advise you to do this as well. If the family is going on vacation in two weeks, then wait three weeks to talk about it on your social media accounts in past tense. Example “Our trip to Orlando was outstanding. Mickey Mouse is still as wonderful as ever.”

Here is a better example. Your Child, “Looking forward to the (High school name) basketball game tomorrow. My friends and I will be there in our Hawks shirts ready to cheer on a victory.”

If a predator is following your child, they know where they will be, what time they will be there, and what they are wearing. This is a chilling thought. A better way to talk about the game via social media would be, “The Hawks game yesterday was outstanding. We won and we had a ball cheering them on to victory.”

No Location Check-Ins

Location check-ins are the next big thing in the world of social media. People are checking in at Starbucks, the movies, sporting events and more. This provides their current location and activity in the present tense, which is a no-no.

Our child has been informed to not activate their GPS location finder, so Twitter and other social media accounts can post their every move. Talk about an easy way to allow predators to monitor and follow them. Don’t allow it in your home, we aren’t.

In our opinion, these are some very good starting guidelines to allowing your children into the world of Social Media. As mentioned, we are sure we will expand this list eventually in the near future, but for now they are our working model.

Our oldest has been on his Twitter account for a few weeks now and haven’t had any trouble following these rules. We will see how things progress in the future and how he handles the responsibility. We would love to hear from you and your experiences with social media for your child. If you have any additional guidelines to share, please do so below in the comment area.

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