The Top 10 Things Parents and Teachers Should Know About Facebook

Most children these days know more about social media than their parents do. In order to help keep your child stay safe online it is important to try to understand what they are doing online and who they are chatting to. The best way to do this is to set up your own social media account, such as Facebook. This will allow you to become familiar with the applications that your children use on a day-to-day basis.

Have a look below at the top 10 things that every parent should know about Facebook.

1. The default privacy setting for Facebook is a lot more public than you would have thought. It is important to review your child’s privacy settings in order to make sure that personal information (such as where your child lives or goes to school) is safe.
2. If you do decide to set up a Facebook account and ‘friend’ your child, you cannot necessarily see everything that they are doing online. This is because Facebook allows users options of which individuals can see their posts.
3. Anyone who has a Facebook account is allowed to send your child a friend request. In order to change this default setting you would need to edit ‘privacy settings’ under the ‘How to connect’ heading.
4. Anyone who is friends with your child can tag them on Facebook. In order to review tagged pictures before they are posted on your child’s account you must tell your child to go to ‘tag review’. This will allow your child to accept the tag or deny it.
5. It is crucial to tell your child not to put their location on every post that they do. This can be very dangerous in the sense that stalkers may be watching your child and waiting to see where he or she is going next. This setting can be changed under the privacy settings of your child’s account.
6. Remember that once your children post something on their Facebook page they have the option of deleting it. Therefore, if your children regret posting a particular picture or a status update they can quickly delete it and it will not appear on their page any more.
7. When your child logs onto Facebook from a public computer they must always log off again when they are finished.
8. Your child has access to thousands of games and applications via Facebook. Before your child downloads these games ask him or her to first read the terms and conditions carefully (and understand them) before just agreeing.
9. If your child is being bullied online, or if someone is posting offensive content on their wall, you must tell them that they have the option of deleting the content and also have the option of ‘unfriending’ or blocking the particular person that is bothering them.
10. Facebook also allows users to engage in live video chatting or real time chats. Be sure that your child understands how to show that they are unavailable. This is especially important during homework and exam time.