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FAMILY/EDUCATOR SAFETY TIPS

Knowing the basics and starting a conversation are great ways to help keep teens safer on social networking sites. Next, get involved. Here are a few helpful tips:

• Make your own profile and add your children as your friends to communicate with them and monitor their behavior.

• Tell teens to make their profiles private and emphasize that they should only add people as friends if they know them in person. Discuss the risks associated with adding people they don’t know.

• Urge teens to choose gender-neutral screen names that don’t divulge their identities or locations.

• Talk about whom they are communicating with and the risks of posting personal information.

• Set rules. Teens should know that you have access to their pages at any time. Periodically review the site with your teens and talk about removing any information you feel puts them at risk.

• Examine their lists of friends to make sure they know each one personally and discuss with them how to block messages from people they don’t know.

• Browse friends’ pages to make sure there is no revealing information.

• Explain to teens the unintended consequences of posting pictures or comments. Teens may not realize that high school officials, college admissions offices, and potential employers could view what they post.

• When in doubt, contact the site in question. Look for links titled “tips,” “help,” “contact us,” or “FAQs,” usually located at the bottom of the webpage.

The information in this campaign has been provided by the NetSmartz Workshop, a program of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. For more information about keeping kids safer online, visit NetSmartz.org.

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