Online Safety for Our Children: How to Keep Our Kids Safe on Facebook

The internet is just one open book now a days. If you want to know something about someone, just check out the social networking sites. With all the updates they accept people can pinpoint what your child is doing and who they are doing it with. We have to teach our children some online safety.

I don't know how many times I have been on Myspace and a child has said text or call me and actually give out their number. They are not realizing how many people are actually getting their number. It's not just their friends because on a lot of sites such as Myspace and Facebook they do not have their privacy settings set right so just their friends can see it. Anyone can get this info if privacy settings are incorrect.

Such as on Facebook, they have new privacy settings you have to opt into. They have changed this several times. Adults are confused on how to use these privacy settings so a child must also be. With everyone being able to see your child's information you will want to know how to set the privacy settings so only people he or she knows can see the information that they share. They have what they call categories that you can place each person in. This will help with what information each group of people are able to see. If you have family photos you may only want to share them with family. With our children showing photos they may have a friend category that they can show friend photos to. Now how to do this.

When your child logs into Facebook have them go to the left hand side of the screen and click on friends. The next step is to click on the create list link. A separate window will open to name the category of people.You then list the people under each category. After completing this step we need to go to privacy settings. Go to the right side of your screen and click on account, then on privacy settings. You need to click on custom. Then you manually have to go through each one to say who gets to see what. This is time consuming but well worth it to protect your child. The next step is only if your child plays game on Facebook. When playing Facebook's games you are granting companies to your personal information. Alot of people don't realize this. If there is a game your child is not playing anymore, get rid of it. Select account on the upper right hand side of your screen, then to privacy settings, then to applications and websites under what you are using. Remove the unwanted and unplayed games.

Keep your kids safe on Myspace. Children should not be saying where they are and who they are with. Any stranger can pick up on this information and follow your child. Myspace also has privacy settings when u set up the account on who can see your information.Make it where only friends can see this information. Always tell your child not to accept friend requests from people they do not know.

Monitor your child's online activity. This way you can see who they are talking to, what updates they are using and who is on their friend list. If someone is on their friend list, especially an adult, I would sit them down and explain the dangers of adding people that they do not know. If you have a young child that uses the internet write down their passwords and check on them from time to time. Be very careful of this as to avoid invading their privacy.

All in all the internet was a good invention. We just have to keep our children safe and if that means by monitoring their activities and explaining to them the safety rule of not giving strangers their numbers, not letting their location be known, and not accepting friend requests from people they don't know. With the new privacy settings it is a lot easier to be safe.Happy safe surfing!