Editor’s Note: Brianne is a writer/blogger. She loves writing travelling and reading books. She contributes in Equity Trust Company Complaints. Her contribution can be also found here: Equity Trust Company Complaints
Today, the landscape of social interaction among the teenagers has simply changed with the advent of social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and MySpace. A majority of teenagers and young people are seen hooked to these sites for long hours via their computers or smartphones.
This has therefore become a big concern among the modern day parents to monitor their children over these social networking sites. The parents who are not much aware about these sites find big time dealing with these kinds of situations. However, there are many ways to keep a check over your child’s social media activities. A couple of these ways are discussed as under to monitor the teens and teens’ activities over social media sites.
Explore the social media
If you are not aware of the social media sites and other similar platforms where your children often dwell, then make sure it’s time to explore these new platforms. Make sure you create accounts at sites like Facebook or Twitter and explore the ways of using it along with checking the security settings. Also, you check different functions and actually use it to connect with your family and friends.
The more you explore and use these sites the more you would become comfortable in understanding the ways your kids use these platforms. Though you may not require catching up some of the latest text speak, but still need to familiarize yourself with the ways to interacting and dwelling over these ties. Also, don’t forget to check the latest safety guidelines pertaining to social media.
Connect with your child
The second thing which you need to do is to connect your teenage child over Facebook or some other social networking sites. Though there is a possibility that your child could have filtered you out, yet you need to stay active over these platforms to monitor him or her. Make sure you send out messages which are appropriate using these platforms.
You are not supposed to completely infiltrate your kid’s social circles over these sites, yet it is vital to be aware and inquisitive as much as you can. So, unless you have any evidence regarding your kid’s safety problem, make sure you avoid trying to crack your child’s social networking site’s or email’s accounts. This act could compel your child to live a secretive life in the coming future.
Discuss safety with kids
If you come across any of the small offenses like swear word or off color joke in your child’s chat box, make sure you do not overact over this situation. Instead, you need to look for serious kinds of issues like online predators, illegal drugs and things like sexting and underage drinking. Discuss with them safety and security issues against all the serious things discussed above with your child without losing your calm. Ask them to set up their privacy settings to the highest level over the social networking sites.
Set up limits
A majority of children spend time accessing these sites over phones and computers; this could be called as normal thing unless you see them using them excessively affecting other activities. If you come across such situation, make sure you set limits before your kids. However, if setting up limits does not simply work, you need to install a couple of software applications, which disables the internet or bar the usage of sites after some time.
Final word
You need to adopt some realistic kind of methods to monitor your child’s online social media activities. If you are worried about how to do so, consider the steps discussed above in the article. Don’t panic, instead use simple and balance methods to make your child smart and alert while he or she uses these sites
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