Parents balance freedom, safety on Facebook

By Helena Oliviero

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

For months, 12-year-old Mitchell McEver lobbied his parents. He made promises, too.

No, he wouldn’t be careless, he assured them. No, he wouldn’t hang out with the wrong kind of people.

Finally, the Paulding County couple relented. Yes, they agreed, Mitchell could open a Facebook account.

The McEvers wrestled with the same question faced by almost any parent with both a computer and child at home: At what age is it appropriate to allow preteen and teenage children to access online social networking groups?

“I was very, very nervous at first,” Leiah McEver said. “I just didn’t know much about it. ... And I was concerned what would our friends think. We are not liberal parents.”

McEver said she had an array of concerns — about her son posting or receiving inappropriate items; about sexual predators using his Facebook page to find out information about him; about her son simply wasting too much time on the site.

But, after doing her research, McEver felt confident she could keep her son’s page age-appropriate and safe by using privacy settings, talking about the dos and don’ts on social networking, and by being one of his “friends” and closely monitoring his page.

“It’s actually been a good opportunity to see what his friends are saying without listening in on the conversation,” McEver said. “It’s a way of knowing what’s going on without being nosy.”

Forget the angst over getting a driver’s license. Parents these days face a challenge that comes years before their child drives away for the first time.

Mitchell, a seventh-grader who lives in Dallas, Ga., estimates about three-quarters of his friends were already on Facebook by the time he got his own account.

‘Element of independence’

Mitchell uses Facebook to connect with his friends. He also likes to post photographs from church activities and take quizzes to determine his chocolate bar IQ.

“There’s this element of independence,” said James Andrews, a social media expert and co-founder of Atlanta-based Everything, a company specializing in social media marketing and content development. “There’s a lot of lobbying that goes for Facebook. And, once these kids get it, they feel like they’ve arrived.”

Facebook and MySpace technically require users to be at least 13. But the sites have no practical way of verifying the ages, and many youngsters fib to join in on the action. (MySpace specifically states the minimum age requirement is 13, while Facebook says parental consent is needed for pre-teeners). Some parents consider the age rule a general guidance, like PG-13 movies. Others see it as a minimum age requirement.

Ted Futris, an assistant professor and family development specialist at the University of Georgia, said the age 13 “seems to make sense.” But he believes more important than a child’s birth date is for parents to know when their kids are ready. Some might be mature enough at 12, while others might not be ready at 15, he said.

In the case of Mitchell, his parents felt he was ready and responsible. He made straight A’s in school, was a referee in kids soccer games and did his chores. They gave him the OK to pretend to be about 10 months older to get a Facebook account.

Facebook was started about five years ago and is now the largest of the social networking sites, with 300 million users. The growth was initially driven by college students, but what was once a niche activity has since exploded into a phenomenon engaging members young and old, and putting kids and their grandparents in the same online space.

Young users are hitting it hard.

About half of 12- to 14-year-olds in the United States have created online profiles for social networking, according to a survey of 935 teenagers released in 2007 by the Pew Research Center. Among 15- to 17-year-olds, the percentage of social networkers goes up to two-thirds.

And, among teens with social networking sites, half of them visit those sites at least once a day, the research center reported.

Monitoring behavior

Futris said social networking does carry some risks, such as cyberbullying or children posting inappropriate images online or spending too much time online. But he also said parents can avoid pitfalls by setting boundaries and supervising their teenager’s virtual social circle.

And that all starts with requiring that your children “friend” you, so you can see all their chatter, he said.

In moderation, Futris and other experts said, social networking can provide some real benefits — from providing a creative outlet for youngsters to helping kids connect with family and friends to helping kids rally around good causes like a fund-raiser for flood victims.

“My overall message to parents is you shouldn’t worry so much about it,” said Devra Renner, co-author of “Mommy Guilt: Learn to Worry Less, Focus on What Matters Most and Raise Happier Kids,” and an editor for BlogHer.com “But let your child know what you consider makes for a well-behaved digital citizen — just like you would set the stage of what you expect when your child heads over to a friend’s house for a birthday party or a sleepover. ... You do need to have that discussion — like your son might think it’s funny to put a camera in his pants and take a picture and post it, and some might view that as child pornography. ”

Peter Beck, of Roswell, recently hopped online to check on his 15-year-old daughter’s Facebook account and discovered a questionable posting.

“It was some song lyrics about being ‘love drunk,’ ” said Beck who uses McGruff Safeguard to monitor his daughter’s Facebook activity. “For her, it was about enjoying music. But, for someone who read that cold, it would be inappropriate. It highlighted to me that sometimes kids don’t have the life experience, and they can be naive.”

Beck used it as a teaching moment and told his daughter, Kendi, “We want you to behave on Facebook like your grandmother is watching you.”

Overall, Beck said, allowing his daughter join Facebook about a year ago has worked out just fine, though “she likes it a lot. Maybe too much. I find her sometimes posting late at night.”

Beck’s younger daughter, 12-year-old Kaylee, will have to wait until she’s 13 to network online.

“You have a have certain amount of street smarts,” Beck said. “She has to be old enough to know if someone she doesn’t know approaches her on Facebook, she should come to us and say, ‘I don’t know about this.’ ”

Shane Kenny is founder of the Acworth-based internetsafety.com and father of a 12-year-old.

His company makes Safe Eyes Web filtering software that can block sites that parents deem too risqué.

For now, Kenny uses his company’s software to restrict his son Chad to a kind of online sandbox. He said Chad doesn’t have access to Google and can visit only pre-approved Web sites such as PBS Kids online.

Henry Viloria of Macon relies on the McGruff Safeguard to monitor the online activities of his 14-year-old, Gabe. “My biggest difficulty with my 14-year-old is it’s an age where you don’t hear as much chatter, and you can be left in the dark,” he said. “This way, you have some idea of what’s going on.”

When he first joined Facebook a year ago, Gabe said, he was on there every day, playing popular online Facebook games or talking with his friends about everything that popped in his head. But in recent months, he’s lost interest, and he now gets on Facebook once or twice a week.

“Sometimes, it’s just an efficient way to make plans with friends,” the teenager said.

Several types of software programs are available — some monitor the child’s activity, recording what they type (as well as what others type) on their page and alert the parents via e-mail of any potentially dangerous words like “guns,” “hurt” or “sex.”

Kenny said sometimes kids are not taking the most basic security measures.

“I did do a search randomly and I saw a girl in our church youth group who had written about where she works and what kind of car she drives, and she had not made her profile private, so everyone could see it,” Kenny said.

Some parents are going with kids-oriented alternatives to Facebook, such as Disney’s Club Penguin or My Secret Circle. They are considered social networking with training wheels.

Responsible use

McEver, Mitchell’s mother, made sure she was one of Mitchell’s first “friends.” She also obtained his password so she could also monitor his private e-mail messages.

And she’s set some rules, including no Facebook time until homework is completed. Even then, she limits the social networking to no more than 30 minutes a day.

“I love it,” Mitchell said. “It’s a great way to connect with my friends.”

So far, his conversations are almost entirely G-rated, his mother said. On a recent evening, his status line lights up: “just found bottle of honey under the couch.”

He follows up with: “publicizing (check out that big word) the fact that unicorns are indeed real.”

When one of Mitchell’s Facebook female friends recently used some questionable language, Mitchell blocked her.

He’s used Facebook to galvanize kids his age. He recently started a fan page for his school’s secretary, called “Mrs. Pickens is our Hero.”

“She always has a smile on her face and takes care of us,” Mitchell said. He said he simply wanted to say thanks to an exceptional school employee.

Turns out, he wasn’t the only one.

Once the page was created, 107 Facebook members joined him.

When is the time right?

In deciding whether your child is ready, look to see how the child handles other responsibilities:

● Is your child good at resolving conflicts? Can he cook without burning himself?

● Do your research. Join a social networking site yourself to better acquaint yourself with the way it works.

● Insist that your child “friends” you.

● Make sure you set the privacy settings so your child’s account is not open to the public.

● Establish rules for when your child can use social networking sites, such as allowing the child 15 minutes before dinner or making sure homework is completed first.

● Discuss appropriate language to use on the social networking site and what kind of photographs are OK to post on the site.

Source: Devra Renner, co-author of “Mommy Guilt: Learn to Worry Less, Focus on What Matters Most and Raise Happier Kids.”

Software

Several types of software are available for parents to monitor their children’s activity online as well as filter the Internet and can block pornography, violence and other sites parents don’t want their children to see. The software can also impose time limits on social networking and other sites online. Some are free, including a basic monitoring software by McGruff Safeguard. But more customized, filtering software programs typically cost money. McGruff Safeguard’s filtering software starts at $19.99 for three months.