There are a number of important steps you can take to ensure your children have a positive experience when using sites like Facebook or MySpace:
- Become familiar with the sites yourself
- Encourage your children to keep their profiles private
- Be careful about what information your children are sharing on the sites. You may think you know all their friends in the real world, but you may not know all their friends online
- Encourage children to think about who they want to add as a friend. Encourage them to only add friends they know in the real world
- Make sure your children know where to go for help if they feel uncomfortable. A, and make sure they feel happy talking to you about the negative as well as positive experiences
You might also want to encourage them to think through these things:
- Only upload pictures that you'd be happy for your mum to see. Anything too sexy to be passed round the dinner table should NOT make it on to the web, as it could encourage sex-pests to contact you
- Don't post your phone number or email address on your homepage. Think about it – why would anyone actually need this info when they can message you privately via MySpace or Facebook?
- Don't post pictures of you or your mates wearing school uniform. If dodgy people see your school badge, they can work out where you are and come and find you
- Adjust your account settings so only approved friends can instant message you. This won't ruin your social life – new people can still send you friend requests and message you, they just won't be able to pester you via Instant Messaging
- Tick the "no pic forwarding" option on your MySpace settings page. This will stop people sending pictures from your page around the world without your consent
- Don't give too much away in a blog. Yes, tell the world you're going to a party on Saturday night, but don't post details of where it is. Real friends can phone you to get details. Strangers shouldn't be able to see this kind of information
Most importantly, if you DON'T want your children to access these services use parental control to block access.
If you want more information, these sites have lots of great advice: