Handling Social Media with Our Kids

Susan,

Those guidelines are pretty close to what we do with our kids. We're a bit looser in the friend department, but not by much -- they are allowed to add friends themselves from the pool of people represented by 1. Our church membership, 2. Our relatives, and 3. Friends from their (former) Christian school. For anyone else, they have to ask. Both kids did have to agree to keep both my wife and I as friends, and further, we have their account passwords in case we need to check on anything going on.

Our kids (9th and 11th grades) both have cell phones, which we want them to have, but they are pre-pay phones, and they have to pay for all time and SMS messages on them. That has made them much more careful and responsible about how much they are used, since they will ultimately run out of paid time on their phones if they are abused.

In the past when they have abused their internet privileges by being on when they should have been doing something else, like school, etc., I have cut off access to the internet from their computers for set amounts of time. For a while a couple of years ago, I had to make sure that their computers only had internet access for a brief time in the mornings to take care of email, etc., before being disabled for the rest of the day, as at that time, they were having trouble being disciplined about the amount of time they spent with games, etc. on the internet.

I also use my router to routinely log connections that are made from every internet capable device in the house, so even if any attempt were made to hide history, I can still find out what they are doing.

The email addresses my kids use are on my own domain (dcbii.com), so again, I control all access and can look on the server for what is going on in email. Since most types of registration require valid email addresses, they only have one of those to use, and I can see everything they have signed up for, and if necessary, it's easy to delete or restrict access to the email account.

I definitely want my girls to understand and be able to use technology, but obviously, such use needs to be monitored closely. They are old enough now that at some point in the not-too-distant future they will be adults away from home, and be able to do what they want with the internet, etc., so I have been gradually, as they have earned it, relaxing my restrictions, because I want them to learn to do what is right because it is right, not because if they don't I will enforce it. Once they have left the nest, I can't really enforce it any more anyway.

We do all of those things that were suggested. Our oldest has a cell phone. We read were txts (not everday) know what is going on. But praise the Lord, she is really good about that. She (so far) desperately wants to please the Lord. She is in public school and our biggest regular conversation is how am I going to glorify God in..... Because of that, we are very vigilent with all of those things.

Sounds good Dave. I just always cringe when I hear parents say that they have it locked down and they know exactly where their kids go to. Yet, their kids, with a little knowledge, can so easily bypass most 'home' security systems.