Recognize any of these terms? Our middle school students do. They spend hours a week, even hours a day, at these activities. Most are fun and inexpensive ways to keep in touch with friends and family, but online communities are proliferating and extremely popular. Content is not restricted except by the user, and 'friend' lists are not just known friends.
Often students have not taken the steps to protect their privacy, thus allowing access to and from anyone and anything on the web. If your student is online, be sure you open the lines of communication early, establish clear guidelines and monitor use.
Examples of Online Communities:
MySpace Xanga Friendster Facebook
Note: some sites have age restrictions, but do not have any way of enforcing the restriction.
You will find some specific strategies for talking with your student, setting preferences or monitoring use at the sites above, but here are some guidelines:
Do not put any Buddy or Friend name on your list unless you know whose it is - Double check directly with the person, not a third party.
Do not fill out Personal Profiles - they are searchable by ANYONE on the net. This includes answering profile surveys.
Never provide specific information that would allow someone to assume your identity or be able to identify where you can be found at any particular time. Specifically, written information, email address, pictures, and friends.
Have your child set his or her profile to "private" to prevent strangers from accessing it
Assume anyone, even a teacher or parent, can read your postings.
Don't keep a name on your Buddy list longer than 6 months if you aren't in touch with that person.
Do not go into public chat rooms where your screen name becomes available to the public. If you must, use an alternate screen name you are prepared to delete!
If you play games or Chat in other ways on the Internet, you should ASSUME the person on the other end is not who he/she seems.
Don't mess around on the Internet if you don't know how to protect yourself.
Most importantly, go into your program's Preferences or Properties or Account Settings and set the security or privacy settings so that:
Only names from your Buddy list can contact you (Be sure that 'Allow Anyone' is NOT CHECKED!)
If you have trouble with a Buddy name, you can block it (or just delete it from your Buddy List after doing the above.
If you need to get work done, choose the "go offline", "away" or custom options. Better yet, don't set IM preferences to log on at startup. Log on when you know you can afford to spend time chatting.
