Social media seems to be a way of life for many of today’s tweens. Between Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat, tweens can spend hours a day connecting with friends on these social media sites. While this is all fine and dandy, parents should have social media guidelines in place for tweens to follow.
Follow age limit requirements – All social media sites have an age requirement before you can sign up with their service. This is due to the 1998 Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, which states that online websites cannot collect or make available any information pertaining to children under the age of 13. Parents should be responsible when their kids set up an online social media profile.
Keep private information private – On social media sites, you can pretty much post any personal information you want on your profile, like cell phone number, birthday and home address. While most people don’t care about or do anything with this type of information, there are some online predators out there in search of information like this.
Give parents all social media passwords – While tweens are going to think that giving parents their username and passwords to their social media sites is an invasion of their privacy, it is something all parents should do. The key here is not to just write down their social media login information and toss it in a drawer somewhere, but to use it to check their social media sites regularly to see what they are doing on these sites.
Do not post inappropriate pictures – While most tweens (and parents) don’t think twice about posting a picture of themselves in the latest swimwear, which they took on a family vacation, this is something that shouldn’t be done. Each family will have their own ideas about what is appropriate and what is not.
Be aware of stranger danger – As a general rule, tweens are sociable people. They have no problem talking to anyone, at any time. Tweens have absolutely no reason to talk to anyone on social media sites that they don’t know. Tweens are too young to be able to judge a person’s character online.
