Social networking
What is social networking?
Social networking describes a variety of services like Facebook, YouTube, World of Warcraft, Moshi Monsters and MySpace. All of these services enable direct interaction between individuals. Social networking sites are a great way for your child to stay in touch with their friends and family. Users can post information about themselves, display photos, tell people what they’ve been up to, play games and basically just hang out. Social networking sites form part of the social identity of many teens with many of their peer interactions now taking place online.
Services such as Twitter enable people to share brief messages with each other ‘micro-blogs’, while other services such as Foursquare enable users with mobile phones to locate others with similar interests. Services such as YouTube and Flickr enable users to upload and share media, and comment on other people’s media including photos and videos.
A recent addition to social networking services are location based services which enable users to report their physical location to others via their mobile phone. This is an increasingly popular function in services like Foursquare and Facebook. Using this function, users can use mobiles to physically locate friends and others from social networking sites. Individuals can ‘check-in’ from a location to let others know their whereabouts.
Video – parents talking about social networking and how to manage risks with children
Safer social networking—tips for parents of young children (PDF 93KB)
Safer social networking—tips for parents of older children (PDF 95KB)
Safer social networking—tips for parents of teenagers (PDF 93KB)