Social Media Predator Guide For Parents?

It's undeniable that social media has made our lives increasingly more public, it's universally used and is a part of almost everyone's daily life.

As a parent, it can be difficult to keep track of as social media is constantly evolving and a new platform is popping up every day. And to many kids, social media is life itself.

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Here's the pros and cons of the most popular social media platforms for kids, so you as a parent can make an educated decision on your child's social media usage..

Instagram

One of the most popular platforms with kids, Instagram is an online photo-sharing, video-sharing and social networking service that enables its users to edit their picture and video files using digital filters, and share them on a variety of social networking site.

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Instagram has decent privacy features, you can make your account public or private and it's easy to use.

The aim amongst kids is to get the most number of followers and likes on posts. It also has a feature called "stories" that appear at the top of the feed. Users share photos and video to create a slideshow, that lasts for 24 hours only.

You can also send private messages that can include photos that don't show up in the feed.

Advice: I would recommend that kids have their accounts set to private, that they don't post their location and avoid using hashtags. Hashtags and location information can make photos even more visible beyond your followers if your account is public.

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Facebook

Facebook allows you to create profiles, upload photos and video and send messages. It was originally created so you could keep in touch with friends and family. The minimum age is 13, but there is no real way for Facebook to monitor this.

It does have relatively good privacy settings, but like any social media platform, they're not foolproof. You can choose how visible your profile is and who to share posts with.

One advantage of Facebook is that it's easy to check profile and post history by going to the "activity log". This shows posts that you've been tagged in, your posts, posts you've liked and commented on and posts by others.

Facebook also has a feature called Messenger, where you can text and video for free through the Facebook app.

"To many kids, social media is life itself."

 Advice: Kids aren't using Facebook as much as they used to, which is unfortunate as out of all the platforms this is the easiest one to monitor.

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Snapchat

Snapchat is a messaging app that lets users put a time limit between 1 – 10 seconds on the pictures and videos they send before they disappear. It has a bunch of funny filters.

The biggest misconception with Snapchat is that once the snap has been viewed that it disappears. Snaps DO NOT go away forever. Smartphones allow you to capture screens, and this is exactly what people do. You can see if someone has done this, but by then it's too late.

Kids might think that Snapchat is seemingly risk-free, which has previously encouraged users to share pictures that are inappropriate or that they wouldn't want the world to see.

Snapchat is prohibited to children under 13. And I use that term loosely as Snapchat doesn't ask for age on sign-up, leaving parents or others needing to report if a child under 13 is using it.

By default, anyone who knows your username or phone number can send you a message, but you can configure Snapchat to only accept messages from people on your friends list.

Advice: There is severe lack of accountability with Snapchat. I personally love Snapchat, but I'm an adult and I snap the same three people over and over. As a parent and if Snapchat is around when my daughter is older, this is one social media app that I probably won't be letting her use.

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WhatsApp

This is a really popular app with teenagers (and adults). It lets users send text messages, audio messages, videos, and photos to one or many people. This age minimum of 16 has been set by WhatsApp and I find this app quite pushy, after you sign up it automatically connects you to all the people in your contacts who are also using the app.

My concern with WhatsApp for teenagers is that is has a location feature that reveals the exact spot on a map where any given photograph or video was taken and there is no limitation or enforcement of sharing inappropriate content. Chats in WhatsApp are not deleted, they just become hidden and archived. It also shows people the last time your child used their WhatsApp account and whether your child is online right now.

Advice: Stranger danger… your child can be contacted by someone they don't know. Make sure your child changes their status: Select Settings - Account, and then Privacy. Under status, change it from Everyone (the default setting) to My Contacts. That way, only people they know will be able to see when they last used WhatsApp.

Make sure location tagging is turned off also. Go into any chat in WhatsApp, tap the plus/arrow icon to the left of the tap box, select "location", a pop up will appear asking to access your location setting. Turn this off.

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Musical.ly

Musical.ly is aimed at tweens and is a performance and video-sharing social network. "Musers" as Musical.ly users are known, lip-synch to famous songs but also include some original songwriting and singing. Musers, build up a following among friends or share posts publicly.

When a Muser uploads their video, it becomes a "Musical," and other users can leave their comments about it, "like" it, or subscribe to the person's account so they can see more of their content in the future. If an account is not set to "private," Musers can have their Musical's rated and climb their way to the top of in-app popularity charts.

Advice: Many of the music available contains inappropriate language and if you search the hashtags porn can be found. Once you create an account there is no option to delete it. Musical.ly is a difficult one for parents to supervise. If your kids are going to have this app, they have to have their account set to private.

Have your child use your app store account or an account linked to your email, so you'll be notified when an app is downloaded. Anything created or communicated can be cut, altered, pasted, and sent around. Once your kids post something online it's out of your control.

Guest Authored By Megan Del Borrello. Megan is a mother and the director of Gloss Marketing and Behind The Brand. Follow Megan on Twitter.

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“As a parent, it can be difficult to keep track of as social media is constantly evolving and a new platform is popping up every day.

And to many kids, social media is life itself.."

• 

  Authored by:

  Fred Hansen Pied Piper of Social Media Marketing at YourWorldBrand.com & CEO of Millennium 7 Publishing Co. in Loveland, Colorado. I work deep in the trenches of social media strategy, community management and trends.  My interests include; online business educator, social media marketing, new marketing technology, skiing, hunting, fishing and The Rolling Stones..-Not necessarily in that order ;)

Social Media For Healthier Happier Kids?

Science has learned some crazy things about raising kids to be successful. Like first names associated with success by leveraging other people's biases. Or having them do chores. (A good work ethic is second only to love to help someone be happy and successful.)

A new scientific study out of the U.K. tackles the question from the other side. Mental health would seem a natural requirement for success. According to the Royal Society for Public Health, social media can be a big stumbling block. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat can offer benefits, but on the whole, most studied had a net negative impact on the health and well-being of young people according to the researchers.

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But it's not all doom and gloom. There are steps that the platforms, schools, and parents can take to help make the experiences more positive.

The RSPH conducted a survey of 1,479 14- to 24-year-olds in the U.K. about their use of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter and YouTube. The study examined 14 different factors:

1. Awareness and understanding of other people's health experiences
2. Access to expert health information you know you can trust
3. Emotional support (empathy and compassion from family and friends)
4. Anxiety (feelings of worry, nervousness or unease)
5. Depression (feeling extremely low and unhappy)
6. Loneliness (feelings of being all on your own)
7. Sleep (quality and amount of sleep)
8. Self-expression (the expression of your feelings, thoughts or ideas)
9. Self-identity (ability to define who you are)
10. Body image (how you feel about how you look)
11. Real world relationships (maintaining relationships with other people)
12. Community building (feeling part of a community of like-minded people)
13. Bullying (threatening or abusive behavior towards you)
14. FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out - feeling you need to stay connected because you are worried things could be happening without you)

In general, the social platforms studied provided some significant benefits on the average, particularly in the areas of emotional support from others, awareness of others' experiences, self-expression, self-identity, and community building.

However, negatives often outweighed positives.

Of all the platforms, researchers found YouTube to be the only one with a slight net positive effect on kids. In descending order, the others were Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, which had the largest net negative effect.

The biggest single negative factor was too little sleep because young people stayed up late on social media. That can lead to a circle of being tired, having difficulty coping with life, developing low self-esteem, and then feelings of worry and stress that led to poor sleep.

Other significant issues were anxiety, depression, cyber bullying, pressure over body image, and the fear of missing out on what is happening.

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The study authors suggested a number of steps that could help. Social platforms, for example, could try to highly or mark photos as having been digitally manipulated so kids wouldn't take everything they saw as real.

Schools and social agencies need to ensure that professionals have more training in digital media and its effects and also can also teach students how to use social media safely.

Parents also can take action. For example, have kids turn off their phones at a given hour and maybe even deposit them someplace until the next day so they're not up late online. (And take the advice yourself to model good behavior.) Help kids learn how to handle cyberbullying and to avoid doing it themselves. Find out how to help girls grow up with a positive body image.

Guest Authored By Erik Sherman. Erik is an Independent Journalist, Photographer and Author. His articles appear in Forbes, Inc, Fortune and others. Follow Erik on Twitter.

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"It's not all doom and gloom.

There are steps that the platforms, schools, and parents can take to help make the experiences more positive.."

• 

  Authored by:

  Fred Hansen Pied Piper of Social Media Marketing at GetMoreHere.com & CEO of Millennium 7 Publishing Co. in Loveland, Colorado. I work deep in the trenches of social media strategy, community management and trends.  My interests include; online business educator, social media marketing, new marketing technology, skiing, hunting, fishing and The Rolling Stones..-Not necessarily in that order ;)

Follow Me Yonder..