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Home > Articles > Internet Safety for Teens: Your Teenager and Social Networks
| Internet Safety for Teens: Your Teenager and Social Networks |
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It's a gradual change that goes largely unnoticed. All of a sudden, the seemingly endless stream of questions has become a trickle and your opinion about whether the striped top goes with her favorite pair of jeans goes unasked. Instead, you are met at the breakfast table by a moody stranger with black lipstick who vaguely resembles your daughter. You knew it was coming, but did not expect it to happen so soon — your teenager is growing up and officially becoming a young adult.
This new level of independence means your teen will be making decisions for himself or herself. One of these decisions will be how your child cares for his or her Internet safety. In an age when social media sites such as Myspace™, Twitter™ and Facebook® have replaced gathering by the locker or talking on the phone, your teenager's personal information potentially can be seen (and used) by thousands of strangers.
P&G understands your concern regarding Internet safety, and we have adopted a policy that, depending on age and country, requires a parent's permission before we interact with your child and/or before we allow him or her to join and participate in any of our interactive social media sites. Unfortunately, not everyone follows these rules, so we are offering the following Internet safety tips to help you understand what you can do to minimize the risks of online networking.
Did You Know?
- 55% of online American teens between the ages of 12 and 17 use social networks.1
- 49% of social network users use the network to make new friends.2
- 31% of teens who use social networks have friends on their profile they have never met.3
What Are the Risks?
- The personal data contained in your teenager's profile and posted on his or her home page might be seen by more than just friends. Ask your teenager if he or she would be OK with you, a stranger, or his or her teachers, coaches, colleges or employer seeing his or her page. Hopefully this might make your child stop and reconsider what personal information he or she really wants the world to know.
- Scammers are always looking for easy targets, and exposed information is hard to ignore. The more personal information your teenager posts, the greater his or her Internet safety will be at risk. Nothing is 100% secure, but taking a few simple precautions will go a long way toward safeguarding your teen's identity.
- Information posted online will be in cyberspace longer than you think. It is nearly impossible to completely delete an item once it has been posted, so don't let a picture come back to haunt your child long after the party has been forgotten.
What Can You Do?
- Become familiar with the social networking site(s) your teenager uses. Join the site and create your own profile. It is hard to give advice about something you don't understand.
- Ask your teenager if he or she uses the privacy tools available on the social networking site(s). These tools allow a member to limit access to parts of his or her profile. Just remember that these tools aren't perfect and that scammers are finding new ways to get around them. Myspace has prepared the following video series that explains the process: http://www.ikeepsafe.org/PRC/videotutorials/myspace/index.html
- Have your teenager carefully consider what personal information is revealed in his or her profile. Posting personal information is a bad idea, no matter how well you think the information is protected. Don't forget that this applies to what your child's friends post on a message board as well; even something like a birthday wish can reveal age and birth date.
- Go over the site's privacy policy with your teenager. Understand how the site's owners and administration use personal information. Be choosy and pick a social networking site that you both can feel comfortable with.
- Get involved with your teen's school groups. See what programs they offer to help educate kids about this topic, and volunteer to help organize a group if none exists. As part of Data Privacy Day 2010, ThePrivacyProjects.org has assembled educational materials and resources to get you started. See more information: http://dataprivacyday2010.org/activities/
The Internet has changed the way we live and interact with the world. A parent's warning to look both ways before crossing the street is no longer enough — teenagers need to understand the biggest dangers aren't always the ones they see coming.
1. ThePrivacyProjects.org, Dec. 2009
2. Teens, Privacy and Online Social Networks. Pew Internet & American Life Project, April 18, 2007.
3. Ibid. 44.
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