Getting Real With Shadra Bruce
Social media is everywhere.
And especially in our house, where my husband and I run a niche marketing firm that focuses in part on social media strategy and content marketing, social media is prolific.
But does your child need to have Facebook? As a parent, letting your kids venture into the world of social media can be a little scary. How do you protect your child from the entire world that they now have access too? Where do you draw the line? (We draw the line at Snapchat).
We’ve allowed the kids their Facebook pages on a few conditions:
- We get to be friends. There is no way they get an online profile without our ability to monitor it.
- They are not allowed to accept friends without our approval first.
- We know the password.
And of course this privilege comes with a talk about safety, privacy, and a touch of common sense that we hope to instill.
You’ll be able to decide at what point you think your child is mature enough for a social media profile. Just remember that it might be better to allow controlled access with your approval and guidance than to refuse completely. The internet can be accessed anywhere and your child might create an account secretly (something Kira pulled when MySpace was popular), so keep an eye out.
We also allow our kids to have their own webpages and manage their own Facebook pages and Twitter accounts (following the same rules).
We have found that it is better to educate our kids about online behavior and etiquette than shield them from it completely.
