Privacy is of particular importance for teens on social networking sites where personal information tends to flow freely and could be accessed by people they don't really know.
Teens on social networking sites have tools available to them to help protect their information. Most social networking sites offer privacy settings that give users the ability to determine who can access their profile as well as various components thereof such as basic information, personal information, videos and photo albums.
On social networking sites, younger users are typically defaulted to "private", only viewable by friends, whereas adults are defaulted to "public", viewable by anyone. The default setting helps protect users who may not fully understand the risks of sharing information online with people they don't know. On some sites, users who are changing their default setting from "private" to "public" are presented with safety messaging alerting them to the risks of making their profile public. This messaging helps them to make an informed decision. In addition to privacy settings, most social networking sites also provide communication settings. Communication settings let users determine who can send them messages or post comments on their site.
Even if your teen has their profile marked as "private", meaning that it is accessible only to friends, keep in mind that their personal information may still be at risk as friends on social networking sites do not always equate to friends in the real world. Social networking has brought about a concept known as 'friending' which describes the act of making friends online by sending requests to other members on the site. Teens typically start with sending requests to their own friends and then their friends' friends. Through 'friending' teens can have an ever expanding list of friends, but most of these friends are simply acquaintances and sometimes not even that.
As soon as your teen 'friends' someone, that person has access to your teen's profile. Information that would be appropriate to share with a true friend such as pictures, party invites and school happenings should not be shared with acquaintances, or someone they know very little about. There is always a chance that the information could be used in an abusive manner such as sharing without permission, altering photos, cyberbullying, and even stalking.
If your teen is on a social network, talk to them about who is on their friends list and the risks posed by sharing too much information with people they really don't know. Make certain that they are aware of and utilize the site's privacy and communication settings to help protect their information and create a positive and safer experience.
