How Can Kids Protect Themselves from Online Dangers on Facebook?

With so many social media apps being introduced in the technological world, Facebook still remains the most popular social media app of all time. Most kids have an account on Facebook these days. The platform helps them keep in touch with their friends and family, play games with them, upload their statuses, photos, and videos, and share with others.

While interacting with their friends on this social media platform, they forget about the risks associated with Facebook. They may not be able to identify those risks but surely their parents can. That is why most parents use mobile spy apps to monitor their kids’ activity on Facebook.

Using parental control and monitoring apps is a good option when it comes to protecting your kids on this social media platform. However, you should also teach your kids to protect themselves from harmful dangers on the platform.

Your kids should be able to recognize the dangers existing on the platform and should be able to battle against them. In this post, we will provide a few essential tips that your kids can follow to protect themselves on the platform. Let’s discuss them briefly.

Make Your Profile Private

If your kid is older than 13, this means they can join Facebook. If they have an account on the platform, make sure that all their posts are being shared with their friends only and not with the general public. Teach your kids how they can change the default audience in the “Settings” menu.

Once they make changes in their account settings and change the default audience to their friends only, only their friends that have been added in their Facebook account can view their posts. Your kids should be able to change the audience whenever they want.

Beware of Stranger Danger

Your kids should beware of stranger danger on Facebook. Teach your kids to only add people on Facebook who they already know in real life. They should never add people on their account who they are strangers to them or whom they have never met in real life.

Facebook is such a social media platform where sexual predators are always searching for innocent kids. They might target your kid and try to become their friends on the platform. Tell your kids to restrict the friend requests that they receive so they can only receive requests from limited people. In the Settings menu, open the “privacy” section and under “who can send you friend requests”, ask them to select “friends of friends”.

Remove Facebook Profile from Public Search

Your kid’s profile on Facebook can come under limelight when they can be found in the public search. If you do not want your kid’s Facebook profile to pop in Google or other search engines when others look for their name, then you need to teach your kid to remove their profile from public search.

All you need to do is, ask your kid to open the privacy section in the settings menu. Under the “do you want search engines outside of Facebook to link to your profile” section, ask them to press “edit” and then uncheck the tick box.

Review Your Tags on Facebook

When your kids use Facebook, make sure they regularly view the posts and pictures in which their friends are tagging them. It is up to your kids to decide whether they want to be a part of that particular tag or not.

They can review their tags on Facebook by heading to the privacy menu in the settings. Open “timeline and tagging” section and under “review posts that friends tag you in before they appear on your Timeline”, you need to select “enable” from the drop-down menu.

Once this section is enabled, your kids will receive a notification on Facebook when they are tagged in a post or picture and then they can choose whether or not they want that to appear on their profile.

Block or Report Inappropriate User

You can also explain to your kids that they can report or block someone from Facebook if they find someone inappropriate. It is possible that your kid may receive inappropriate messages from someone on Facebook Messenger or come across unsuitable comments posted by someone on their posts.

In such situations, your kids should have the liberty to either report such users or block them directly. All they need to do is go to the privacy section of the settings menu and select the “block” option as shown on the left side. They can also block a user on the same privacy page. Under the section named “block user or block messages”, they can type the name of the person they want to block, choose their Facebook profile, and then tap “block”.

An inappropriate post or comment can also be reported. To do that, all your kid needs to do is tap the drop-down menu to the right of it and then choose “report this post or comment”.

Choose a Strong Password

Always teach your kid to use a strong password for their Facebook account so it cannot be accessed by anyone else. They should never share their Facebook password with anyone else, not even their friends. A strong password is the one that is a mix of upper- and lower-case letters, numbers, and special characters.

Tell your kids to never include their personal information in the password such as their date of birth, their full name, or the name of the pet, or the name of their favourite football team or player.

Install a Parental Control App

This tip is helpful for parents because, with parental control or a spy phone app installed on your kid’s phone, you can make sure they are protected on the Facebook platform. You can monitor their Facebook messages, posts, and everything that they do on the platform and not worry about their safety there.

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