I learned a lesson a while ago that it is not a good idea to allow my teen "private" access to any SM account. Long story short. I caught her breaking all the internet safety rules which school and I have been drumming into her head for a few years and it shocked me just how much she revealed of herself and the family to some stranger she only just knew. And she knowingly did it too. She said things like "my mum says I must not tell you this because of privacy." After she did it. Only when that person became abusive to her and saying offensive things about her sister, spamming and harassing her account with loads of rude messages, that she finally learnt her lesson (I hope she did, anyway). We had that person (and his multiple accounts) blocked and disabled Google Hangouts. But now he knows her and her sister's full name and what town we live in, and even how we look (because she sent him photos), he could stalk her (or us) anytime online. And that was just a bored 10 year old boy she met on a gaming platform.
Kids aren't aware of the power of SM until it's too late. I used an analogy to explain it to my daughter : when you send your jpeg photos to someone you met online, it's akin to just walking out the front door of our house and handing a passerby photos of you and letting them keep them. Would you seriously do that in real life? Go out the front door and tell a random passerby your full name, give them copies of your photos to keep, etc.?
I have since then removed all personal passwords for her Windows profile and am signed into her email accounts all of the time so I can see what is being said. I felt sorry I had to do this. To deny her privacy on SM, but after all this I felt it was the only way. When she's 18, she can have her privacy back. It was also a lesson too for me that I can try and teach my kids so much, but it is up to them personally how much the lesson takes.
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