Following are a few tips on Social Media for parents:-

• Talk to children about online privacy issues, making sure they know to never to identify personal information such as their full name, address, age, school and don't ever post photos in school uniform.
   
• Check your child's privacy settings regularly.
   
• Don’t tag photos of your children at their school if your accounts are not set to completely private. This is a child safety issue as anyone driving past can search the school on Instagram and see all of the photos that have been tagged at the school, often by parents who have not set their account to private on Instagram. If your account is not completely private, anyone can see your photos of your child, their name, the name of the cat ,where you go on holiday, what your family does on weekends, when birthdays were and other information about your family and your life. Therefore a complete stranger could make up a story that could be very convincing to your child by using the information you have shared in a public forum of more than 500million users.
   
• Make sure your children know not to accept follow or friend requests from people they don't know. Check regularly particularly when they are in Primary school who they are connected to and how they know them.
   
• Make sure the apps you allow your kids to use are age appropriate. Make sure you sit with them and work through it together. Look for how easily they can connect with strangers through chat rooms or accepting friend requests.
   
• Ban devices from the bedroom from as young as possible. Set healthy boundaries around use.
   
• Consider the fact that children in the background of photos or videos you take at your child’s school may be on “no publish” lists. Some children are in protective custody or witness protection and an innocent photo posted on social media could be disastrous.
   
• Make sure you respect classification on games, they are there for a reason.
   
• Make sure the young people in your care know that under no circumstances they should go and meet up with anyone they meet online. Stranger Danger rules apply because they are now literally on digital steroids and 24x7.
   
• Talk regularly to your children about online safety and that if they see anything scary, upsetting or anything sinister online or someone is asking personal questions that they know they can speak up and tell you without judgment if they have sworn at a stranger in retaliation. One of the most common things we hear in our talks with children is a fear of speaking up after they have sworn at someone who has asked for too much personal information, inappropriate photos etc. Children are often too scared to speak up for fear of getting in trouble for swearing.
   
• Understand things like how to manage the Snap Map privacy function and that on Instagram they can and do receive messages from complete strangers often.
  
  

Kirra Pendergast 
CEO - Safe on Social Media Pty Ltd