Keep your children smart on social media before they apply to the Abu Dhabi Indian School they like. Ensure that their posts give the best online impression of them.
Help Your Kids Stay Smart on Social Media: 9 Tips
Kids at such a young age have online accounts. When your kids apply to a new school, you can be sure that the admission officers will take a good, long look at their posts. Make sure whatever’s on their personal pages won’t cost them their slots.
Here are a few ways to help your children stay smart on social media:
Teach Them to Use Privacy Settings
Facebook privacy settings auto update regularly that means your kids should regularly check if their albums or photos are still private or not. They might be unknowingly displaying photos to the schools.
Make it a habit to look over your kid’s profile to make sure they are not posting anything that will pop especially if it is supposed to be private. Being up to date on current policy changes on the social media platforms that your kids use also helps.
Curate the Posts
Remind your kids to ask this question: how will mom or dad feel when they see this post? That should discourage them from posting anything sensitive on their pages. Ask them to imagine an admissions officer from a wonderful Indian school in Abu Dhabi going over their posts.
Will they disapprove of any of the content they’ll find? That’s one way to deter them from posting what might be potentially risqué content.
Look Over the Photos
Is there anything on your children’s social media pages that might misrepresent them or send a bad impression of them? You will want to go over the posts and photos. That or encourage your kids to do so. If they find anything, let them know that it is a good idea if they take those posts down.
Google Their Name
Google your children’s names. What pops up? This is one way to check if there are any things that your kid might need to delete or take down before they start applying at schools or universities. Are there any posts about them that could lead to awkward situations when they start applying to schools, or worse, for a job later on?
Create a Positive Online Presence
It’s not all about deleting or taking down any posts that could misrepresent your kids. If your kids have a personal site where they post their work or if they have a channel or YouTube or if they’re a content creator Tumblr or any other social media platform out there, then remind them to use the privacy settings.
If those sites aren’t showing up when you Google their names, then there might be something you can do to help. That way, you can highlight their online presence. Highlighting their positive presence online is just as important as removing anything that could reflect on them badly.
Vent in Person
This is a lesson that not even adults often remember. But when people vent about anything online, whether it is about their classmates, teachers, or classes, the words can haunt them for years. Someone could easily take a screenshot of that and the negative words could cost them a slot or job.
Remind your kids that if they are upset to never post about those feelings. Instead, it is better to talk these out with someone or to write down their thoughts in a private journal. Writing it down will help them process their emotions better. It will also keep them their thoughts safe from prying eyes.
A bad day passes but whatever they post online is not as easy to take down. If they do not want posts that could bite those back years later, it’s also ideal that they don’t post any of that in the first place.
Protect Their Privacy
Make sure you remind your kids never to display their personal details. This includes their phone numbers and address as well as their check-ins. The check-ins makes it easy for others, especially predators, to track down your children’s movements online. These are information that should not be shared to protect their safety and privacy.
Ask Them about Passwords
They do not have to tell you their passwords. But always remind them to choose strong ones. If their passwords are weak, they will be a lot vulnerable to hackers who might use their sites to post malicious or sensitive content. Make sure they’re well aware of the importance of choosing the right passwords.
Keep an Open Dialogue
You have better things to do—and a lot of work to keep you too busy—to even have enough time to check your children’s social media pages every single day. What you can do is to maintain a strong line of communication with your kids. Make them feel that they can talk to you about anything. That way, if anything online bothers them, you will know right away, and you can check if you need to step in or not.
Help your child stay safe online. Start putting these tips to good use.
