Do you let your kids have their own instagram account?

Ahhh what a post to introduce myself on....but here goes.

My son is four so this is a moot point, however I worked for 10 years in the internet industy, desinging websites, communities, working on PC games and my knowledge of online programs is, well it's horrific.

Honesetly the amount of people pretending to be minors to get at your childen is truly sickening, and I know a lot of MMO Games these days have moderators specifically to try and safegurd minors on their games regardless of the ratings.

My Tips would be...

Don't allow anyone under the age of consent near a social media application unless you are checking EVERY single PM or private chat they have. Anything that is public is moderated so that is usually safe.

If they play an MMO same deal, if it can't be locked down with controls provided, make sure you play with them and monitor them at all times.

Forums are okay, providing they have no access to PM's and are not in "private" forums.

The sad fact is that it's not your kids who are the worry, it's the people who are specifically on these programs targetting them, pretending to be the same age, sending PM's and the private chatting that it allows that you can't see.

Sometimes I love the internet for how small it's made the world, and othertimes I despair because of how easy it is for predators to gain access to our precious ones even in our own home :o(

Sarah
 
My girls are 13 and 11 1/2...they both have one. Their accts are set to private and I check often to make sure whoever is following them is either family or friends/school mates. If I don't know them or find them in their yearbooks, I delete them. lol Same with FB. Neither of them are allowed to have a Twitter acct. I don't see the point since they have IG and FB...not to mention I've never used Twitter, so I don't completely understand it and can't really watch them well enough to make it comfortable for me.

Now, I'm not sure how to combat accts I don't know about should my girls try to get sneaky and do that. That's the stuff that freaks me out.
 
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Yes. My almost 16 yr old (special needs son) has instagram, and only this summer, it was quite helpful for making sure the kids didn't forget about him over the summer, and he's loved it. It's his only social media he has, and it will prolly stay that way.

My 11 yr old son asked for an instagram account in May, I was not on, so I told him I would try it for a week and let him know if I would let him do it or not. Turns out, I loved it and I'm totally into instagram now, and I let him sign up for his a week later. We all have our accounts set to private, so we see who is following all of us. (I can't believe the freaky requests I've had and my boys have had a few, too - eek!)

My kids don't have their own phones. My older boy just uses my iphone or ipad when he asks for instagram, and my 11 yr old saved his money and sold a few things to buy a refurbished ipad mini for his birthday, but he doesn't know the wifi password, and only has internet when we are supervising him.

They are not on it every second, which I'm glad. There are definitely kids that like any pictures we post (no matter what time of day or night) in a matter of seconds after it goes up, everytime. That sorta freaks me out that it appears they are on ::every:: second.

I do make my kids show me everything they want to post, and I have to approve it before they do. I'm not a control freak, just trying to protect my kids and making sure they represent themselves well in this one social media outlet they have. I don't plan to let my kids have facebook. I think it's dying out with the teens, at least around here it is. They all instagram, and ignore their fb accounts.
 
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p.s. My youngest son just turned 8 a month ago, and he has several friends on instagram. He has asked me if he could be on, and it was an absolute no. I just don't think my 3rd grader needs to instagram. All the photos the kids his age are posting are dorky and it just feels entirely unnecessary. With my other boys, they are in 10th and 6th, a little older - I'm okay with that.

I do think snapchat is evil, and I will never let my kids have that, but it scares me mostly for girls to have that after some bad stories I've heard. I hate the whole premise that it's all a timed thing and is not permanent. Nope. Anything posted anywhere online can be permanent if people know how to take screen shots, etc. I think snapchat is way freaky!
 
Kjersti said:
Elsye (13) has an instragram. The rules are that I have the password and that I'm her friend. At first she wouldn't add me.....so I took the liberty to start adding all her friends. hehe!! Now I'm friends with her AND her friends. LOL!!
Click to expand...

I actually like being on instagram for this reason. It's very cool that all my kids friends have friended me on there. I like keeping an eye on them and seeing if they are up to good things or not...

I don't think my boys have ever thought of unfriending me on instagram, but if they did, I would tell them their account would be closed if I was not their friend on there. I like having them be friends with their aunts and uncles, too. So far, not many of their aunts and uncles are on IG, but their grandma is, and they follow her and she follows them. One can never have too many adults watching, IMO. :)
 
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