Kids and Social Media

kids and social mediaThere is yet another issue making headline with kids and social media. This time it is Instagram that is the focus. Pictures are circulating through a school, and not good pictures.

Do you know how to lock down your kids device? If not, than we have some things to work on.

Are you smarter than your smart phone?

The answer is probably not. The way our phones have grown over the past few years it is both amazing and scary. We have kids 3, 4 5 years old that can do wonders with the hand sized computers. Do they really understand what they are doing? Do they even know there are risks involved? Do you  as the parent or guardian know how to protect them? Hopefully…  If not then you need to do a little homework

With some devices (android) there is a function called “kid mode”. On others (windows) there is the ability to lock down for children (kid’s corner). On Apple devices there are a few articles on how to setup “restrictions” aka Parental Controls.

What to do?

Depending on the device you have you need to understand how to lock it down, and more importantly, how to prevent your child from unlocking the device.

Letting a child have unfiltered and unmonitored access to the internet and all the applications available is a recipe for disaster. There are a LOT of dark and dangerous places on the internet, many of which I have heard and never seen. (thank God!)

Over the next few weeks I will be researching and documenting some of the good and bad. I will be looking into various operating systems, the ability to lock them down, and also a brief overview of the dangerous parts of the inter web.

I need your input

Please comment or send me an email with any specific ideas you would like more information about. I hope to partner with a few others from town and start getting the word out as much as I can.

This is an area I have been looking into for a little while, securing and using mobile apps and devices,  now it is time for me to put this into action.

First on my list will be looking at the most popular social media apps and how to setup restrictions. Some may not even offer much in the way of being able to restrict them at the app level, this will make it even more necessary to be able to limit at the device / operating system level.

Again, please let me know if there is anything specific you would like me to concentrate on. From the feedback received I will start a list of items and prioritize accordingly. Thank you in advance.

As always, Truly Blessed!

-Dennis

 

3 Comments

  1. Penny Gagne on November 18, 2014 at 1:15 pm

    At work, we have student devices, and we manage them through a program called Meraki. This at least does not allow students to download apps onto apple devices.

    Myself, I have a twitter account, and I came across something scary today after I read your post. I created a Twitter account in 2011. I’ve only posted 6 times, and can’t even remember when I posted something last. I logged into my account today, to find out that I had over 1,600 people following me, and I was supposedly following 36 people. Reminding you, I haven’t used this account in a long time. When I looked to see who was following me, I would say about 98% was in Arabic script of people I didn’t recognize. I immediately deactivated my account. I never gave consent to follow or be followed by this many people, and by all these people I didn’t know. Too scary.

    • dennisbosse on November 19, 2014 at 6:11 pm

      Hello Penny,

      I have seen the same issue. Create an account for testing then forget about it. Takes on a life of it’s own.

      Great reminder to disable old accounts!
      Thanks..
      -Dennis

      • Penny Gagne on November 19, 2014 at 10:16 pm

        The funny thing is, yesterday, I deactivated my twitter account, and last night, I received an email that it was reactivated, “Welcome back!”. That wasn’t me. Then I had all these people saying they were following me. So I had to log on again, I changed my account name, created a very difficult password, then turned around and deactivated the account again.
        So far, I have not see anyone activate it again.
        What is scary is how people can get your information over the internet and can hack into your account.

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