Passwords, social skills and vigilance help cyber security

PARENTS should friend their children on Facebook and ask for the passwords to their social media accounts, according to a cyber safety expert.

PARENTS should friend their children on Facebook and ask for the passwords to their social media accounts, according to a cyber safety expert.

Tricia Munn, of Eyes Open Social Media, who is a consultant for several Queensland schools including Anglican Church Grammar School and Clayfield College, said parents needed to improve their social media savviness to keep their kids and teenagers safe online.

Ms Munn believes parents are entitled to know their children’s social media passwords at least until they turn 16.

“Kids are getting on to social media from eight and nine years old; some at ridiculously young ages,” she said.

“Parents should definitely get involved. They need to be getting on the social networks that their children are on and they need to know their way around them.”

Ms Munn believes parents are entitled to know their children’s social media passwords at least until they turn 16.

She also advised parents to create a strict social media contract with their children, laying out rules that govern their use of social media sites. She encouraged them to review that contract weekly and take ­action if it had been breached.

Ms Munn said it was important for parents to ensure the people their children connected with online were people known to them in real life.

Parents should also be familiar with the security settings of social media sites, and Ms Munn said that children under 16 should have non-identifying profile shots, such as photos of their pet or favourite holiday spot.

Cyber safety expert Leonie Smith advised parents to become friends with their young teens on sites like Facebook but avoid engaging too obviously with their kids online.

“If you do, they might create a second account you don’t know about,” she said.

Ms Smith said parents should approach their children’s digital lives just like they would their relationships offline, taking care to know who they were talking to and what they were doing at 13, but providing them with some independence at 16.

Cheryl Scanlan, Detective Superintendent of the Child Safety and Sexual Crimes Group at Queensland Police, said parents needed to get better at working the devices their children used every day.

Supt Scanlon said parents should be alert to behavioural changes, including whether children became evasive when mum or dad entered the room.

Queensland police encouraged disabling the location services on a child’s smartphone or device, which when linked to social media platforms can operate like a GPS tracker.