Underage Children and Social Networking

Underage Children and Social Networking

Shalynn Weeden, Bethany Cooke and Michael McVey

In this article the authors aimed to determine if schools could have an impact on teaching social media safety to children and parents of children ages 7-12.  I found it very interesting that children as young as 9 years old have access to social media sites.  It also amazes me that parents and children are often unaware of how much access an unknown adult has to their children.  This further supports the case for earlier education about digital citizenship and online safety courses in schools.  The article also discusses how parents and other family members would benefit from such opportunities about online safety.  I do agree with the authors when they discuss that the age restrictions on most of the social networking websites are not much more than suggestions.  This makes it a priority to parents and educators to explain and understand the privacy settings of many of these websites, because children are going to join these websites.  If we do that, then at least students will be more aware of the dangers of social networking and hopefully aid them in making wise choices when engaging in them.