Status Update: Young Facebookers Need Parental Supervision

CONNECTIONS | by KAVITA VARMA-WHITE

WHAT’S A PARENT TO DO WHEN SOCIAL MEDIA SITES such as Facebook become a focal point of your tween or teen’s life?

Get your sleuthing on!

© facebook.com

A recent CNN.com article cites two surveys that confirm a large percentage of kids ages 12 to 17 use social networking sites, and a significant percentage do so every day.

Whether your teen is into the hot game Farmville, or just using Facebook to communicate with friends, it doesn’t automatically mean they are doing anything sinister.

But how much parental supervision should teen Facebookers have? An informal poll of friends on the subject found two camps.

• Parents of tweens (age 8 to 12) are leery about letting their kids have accounts. (In fact, Facebook’s policy states that children under 13 are not permitted to access it.)  While many of their kids ask for accounts, they don’t push it when the parent says no.

• For parents of teens, the supervision issue is stickier. One friend laments that she didn’t create rules for computer use from the beginning. Her 14-year-old son “has a laptop in his room, and is on it all the time, but from what I observe, he’s on Farmville and monitoring his rotisserie leagues.” Another mom monitors her two teen daughters’ Facebook usage several times a week.  Another looks at her 19-year-old’s account every day and says, “I need to know what’s going on at all times.”

These parents all agree they don’t need to be an official Facebook “friend” with their teen, as long as they have full access to the account.

So, for now, forget about sneaking into your kid’s laptop/backpacks/bedrooms to get the dirt.  It’s best to establish rules, be vigilant, be involved and let your kids know that you care about what they are doing.