How to Protect Children on Facebook

What is Facebook?

Facebook is a substantial website as well as there are many individuals upon that site that maintain the report and also have large lists associated with friends. Despite the fact that their rules prohibit children under the age of 13 from signing up for the service, children still get on there anyway - with or without their parent’s knowledge. Concerns over online predators and the ever-growing issue of cyber bullying have brought the need to monitor your children’s social networking activities to the forefront.

Cyberbullying Stats: Social Networks such as Facebook are Hot Spots

• Girls are harassed more often: 38% reported some form of online harassment.
• Social network users are more likely to report online harassment: 39% experience it
• The majority (59%) of harassment comes from other minors.
• 77% of the targets for online predators were age 14 or older, and 22% were users ages 10 to 13
• 25% of children have been exposed to unwanted pornographic material online

With so much objectionable activity and unwanted sexual predatory behavior taking place, if your child isn’t telling you about it, how are you going to be able to protect them? You can protect them when they are at home, but how can you protect them when they are online, without having to stand next to them, or sit with them every minute while they are online? For protecting your children on Facebook, one of the ways that parents are monitoring their Facebook activity is with a device called SurveilStar Parental Control Software. This covert monitoring tool allows parents to silently monitor their child’s computer activity, recording every keystroke, website visited, chat messages, and email.

Some News on Facebook Cyberbullying

With the ability for children and teenagers to have their own personal space on Facebook that they can make "their own", say whatever they want to, and be free from the chains of "censorship" they may feel at home, children and teenagers are embracing the opportunity to do and say things that they would never get away with at home, sometimes even putting themselves at risk not only for damaging their reputation, but also putting their safety at risk.

Teen sues Facebook, classmates over cyberbullying

The latest sad episode of humanity's ugliness allegedly being played out on Facebook's pages has resulted in Facebook itself being sued for $3 million.

Denise Finkel, currently a student at the University of Albany, accused four of her ex-classmates at Oceanside High School of setting up a Facebook group "calculated to hold the plaintiff up to public hatred, ridicule, and disgrace."

Ms. Finkel is not only suing those ex-classmates, but also Facebook, presumably suggesting that the company should be held responsible for what is written on its pages. Facebook said it would vigorously fight the lawsuit.

Ms. Finkel's attorney, Mark Altschul, told Newsday,"She had a very difficult time in high school. (The classmates) were making sure that she was an unwanted soul there."

The courts will be busy with this sort of thing for many years to come. And where will it all end up? The only thing that's certain is another swiftly made episode of "Law and Order."

Facebook to cracks down on cyber-bullying

The social networking site Facebook has agreed to strengthen its security measures to protect young website users from bullies, pedophiles, pornography and other online hazards.

Facebook has pledged to “aggressively respond" to inappropriate content, flash automatic warning signs when young users share personal information with strangers and improve technology that can verify the age of people on the site.

"Building a safe and trusted online experience has been part of Facebook from its outset," said Chris Kelly, Facebook’s chief privacy officer.

Facebook Protection Tips for Parents & Kids

Just recently, Facebook took it upon themselves to offer their 350 million subscribers a new range of settings to improve security for both kids and adults. One of the reasons they felt it necessary to do this was that about half of all Facebook users are in networks for their school, their company, or some other large group, where it makes sense to make information visible to all the members of the network.

Protection Tips for Parents on Facebook

1. Be Friends with your children on Facebook. The simplest way to follow along is to insist on being friends with your children on Facebook. Obviously, becoming their friend requires them to accept your request, however, you can make it a condition of them having an account in the first place.

2. Lock Down Security Settings. Clearly, friending your son or daughter is not nearly enough protection, so it is important to ensure that the security settings on their account are locked down. Setting up and managing "Friends Lists," removing their profiles from Facebook and public search results, protecting photo albums and wall postings so that only friends are able to view them and making contact information private are among the most important. Show your kids how to edit their profile – and explain why the changes are important.

3. Subscribe to a Monitoring Service. If you are concerned about your child’s online activities on Facebook, as well as other social networking sites, then there are options such as SurveilStar Parental Control Software. It provides parents the ability to view all of their child’s most recently updated photos across all of their social networks for protecting them.

Protection Tips for Kids on Facebook

• Controlling Your Privacy.
• Settings Controlling Who Can Find You
• Privacy Policies and Internet Safety
• Don’t open or read messages by cyber bullies.
• Protect yourself—never agree to meet with the person or with anyone you meet on Facebook.
• If bullied through chat or instant messaging, the “bully” can often be blocked.

Protect Your Children on Facebook

As a parent, it is necessary to warn your child against the evil of cyber bullying. Making the child aware of the crime can offer him some protection against cyber bullying. At the same time, the child will become more open about the issue and report you if any such thing occurs. If your child is a victim to cyber bullying, take a strong stand and tell the bullies to stop such activities. Mostly theses cyber bullies are teenagers or kids who would not want their parents to get involved and might restrain such activities. Ask your child to block such bullies from social networking sites, chats, etc.

If you are really concerned about your children's online safety you can install computer monitoring software like SurveilStar this is a parental control software solution and will help you track emails, IM’s, chats, social networking, websites visited, images viewed, etc.

To start an all-out strategic battle to protect my kids from online dangers, while still letting them safely enjoy the games and resources that are available on the Internet, SurveilStar is the perfect solution that can be used for filtering web site content and monitoring the web sites my kids are viewing on the Internet:

Using tools that Surveilstar provides you

Besides your careful selection of the right privacy and security settings, the best advantage you can give yourself as a parent of a Facebook child is to become a user of SurveilStar Parental Control Software. You can view the sites that your children visit and it lets you know if they’ve been exposed to inappropriate or potentially harmful material. You can also block sites or types of sites that you think are inappropriate.

This powerful online tool provides parents the ideal safety solution for Internet dangers and pitfalls. Among other features, SurveilStar Parental Control Software lets you track how your child is using social networking sites in a very effective way. You get to see how they are presenting themselves online, which is a great way to thwart the possibility that they are presenting themselves as an older kid or perhaps an entirely separate identity.

Plus, you’ll get to see how much time they are spending on Facebook (or any other social networking site). This will come in handy when it comes to the balancing act that kids need to confront each day between homework and online social activities. If grades are suffering, you can know exactly how much time is spent on social sites, and you can even “turn off” their computer at certain times of the day or night, to make sure rules are being followed.

Facebook is not evil nor is it necessarily a bad thing for your child. In fact, it can be helpful to them in fostering friendships, keeping in touch with relatives, and sharing with friends and family the things that are important to them. Like anything else in life, it’s about balance and moderation. If your child is Internet-ready and over 13 years of age, then Facebook can be a real joy. It’s your job to make sure they are safe, secure, and that they are keeping their personal information private.