Social Media Crash Course

I was talking to some of the parents that have been attending my parents class on Sunday mornings. We were talking about the class and if it was beneficial for them. In the midst of talking we started discussing future parents class, and the idea of having more discussions on technology/social media/digital parenting/etc. It's one of those things we could fill up a whole 13 week quarter discussing because there is so much out there for parents to learn and discover as kids try to stay three steps ahead of their parents. I want to share with you today, another resource from Chad Landman, "Social Media Crash Course". Granted, this is a fluid and ever-changing world - by tomorrow none of this information could be relevant (and that is the scary thing when we think about the digital world).

For more of Chad's articles and resources visit www.chadl.co or http://start2finish.org/category/active-digital-parenting/

Social Media Crash Course 

Social media, just like technology, changes at the speed of light. Next month there will be a whole new app or service on the scene that appeals to your kid more than the last. Some have more lasting power than others. Some are dangerous, like one I will tell you about today. Some are harmless if you know you child's account info and can log in to see what they've been doing.

Things to remember...

**1. You are the product, not the customer.** These services bill themselves as services to you, the customer, but in actual fact, you're really they're product. How do these companies make billions of dollars? Every time you click, like, retweet, or post something, they get money. They sell your data to advertisers. That's how they make billions.

**2. Nothing is private.** In the face of all the passwords and security and what not, you'd think your data would be safe and secure. It's not. Data breaches happen at these companies all the time. Your data that you put out there has to be transmitted somewhere and it can be intercepted in a variety of ways. Your data is stored on server farms out in the middle of nowhere and people can get your data that way. DON'T EXPECT ANYTHING TO BE PRIVATE ON THE INTERNET.

**3. Know your child's account username and password for any and all accounts.** You should have unlimited access to their accounts at any time, and they should KNOW that you have unlimited access to their accounts at any time.

**4. Your child will naturally gravitate towards what is popular with their friends and what you're NOT using.**

Twitter

• Twitter - the simplest of the social media services
• "Micro-blogging" at 140 characters (same limit as a original text message)
• Facebook status updates without the Facebook
• Twitter is especially appealing to teens because parents aren't on there yet
• Big diff between Twitter and Facebook: Twitter is largely ungoverned - except for spam. 
• You can follow whomever you want - users can also follow you (unless you have an protected account)
• You can retweet whomever you want - and people can retweet you - basically reposting to all their followers what you tweeted
• You can block whomever you want
• You can report anyone for spam
• Direct Messages (DMs) - private messages between users
• Hashtags - ways of categorizing tweets (i.e. #BAMAvsTAMU) 
• Everyone that looked up that particular hashtag could see my tweet 

Facebook

• Started in 2004 for college campuses to interact with each other
• Has grown to over 1 billion users worldwide in 2013
• Has been extremely popular with kids up until the last 24 months or so
• The Hashtag and "private" aspect has dwindled teens' involvement
• Parents and adults now flood the site (most active group is 35-45 year olds)
• You can like Pages or join Groups - none of this private
• You can tag or be tagged in photos - provided you have enabled that under privacy settings
• Privacy setting I love: Make everyon that tags you in something let you approve it before it goes to your timeline
• Privacy settings change and are reset at irregular intervals - no time to go over all of them
• Privacy Shortcuts
• Make sure to check your settings periodically to make sure nothing has been set back to default
• While sometimes confusing, Facebook does allow lots of control of your privacy on their site
• You can deactivate your account, but your data remains for a minimum of 36 months
• Facebook's entire motive is to get you to share EVERYTHING
• Addresses - Facebook does not need to know my address!!

Instagram

• Photo sharing - not a whole lot else
• Let's you tag or @-reply to friends or anyone - also add hashtags a la Twitter and geo-locate
• Let's you take pictures and post them through the app or select pictures from your camera roll
• Allows graphics, screenshots, other pictures and content
• Does not allow pornography or violent content
• You can like or comment on a photo
• You can connect your account to post to Twitter, Facebook, and other services
• Remember: Facebook owns Instagram now, so they will do everything they can to connect it to Facebook for you

Vine

• Vine is "Instagram for video"
• Let's you share 6-second micro-videos with the world
• Does allow you to protect your account (only followers can see your posts)
• Does not allow you to edit existing video and use it
• Allows social discovery of videos easily (not all videos are exactly Christian) 

Snapchat

• Billed as the "private" messaging app
• Very alluring to teens because it deletes photos 10 seconds after they are viewed
• You can friend (add) people and send them messages
• You can add text to your messages
• From the beginning, this app did not have good intentions
• It was built for sharing nude or inappropriate photos on a "non-public" network
• Deleted photos can still be intercepted, stored and retransmitted
• Photos can be screenshotted on the actual phone itself
• Honest opinion? Delete it. Don't allow your children to use it.

Kik Messenger

• Not a lot of difference between this and Snapchat
• Does not delete your photos unless they are deleted manually by the user
• You can share all types of media - Youtube videos, sketches, etc.
• It's just another place where parents AREN'T

For more of Chad's articles and resources visit www.chadl.co or http://start2finish.org/category/active-digital-parenting/

There are so many other apps out there. I plan to share some of the Top 15 apps that kids are on in my next blog post! Hope you have a great day and find this information beneficial!

iOS Parental Controls

We spent two weeks on social media/internet, etc. in our parents class. Honestly, we could have spent a whole quarter talking about how to safeguard our kids from social media and sites they may stumble upon or intentionally go to, as well as, apps which can be dangerous. I was listening to the "I'm a YM" podcast presented by Adventures in Ministry and hosted by Eric Gray and Andrew Jenkins. The subject was technology in youth ministry and one of the areas discussed was "Tips for Youth Ministers to help parents set internet safeguards with their children". Chad Landman (Youth Minister - Church Street) was the guest on the show and he writes often about Active Digital Parenting. I am sure the parents at Rose Hill are getting tired of me sharing his articles with him, because I do... often. It's important, as Chad said, for parents to "Be active. Be intentional. Be ruthless. It is the parents job to protect them."

I consider myself a somewhat tech saavy Youth Minister, in that, I try to be where the kids are. If they are on snapchat, I am also on snapchat. If they are playing trivia crack, I play the dumb game called trivia crack - so forth and so on.

There are many apps that you can use to safeguard your child's internet privileges. However, one of the simple things to do is setting restrictions on any apple device that belongs to your child. Here are a couple of different ways a parent can do that.

To hear the podcast: http://www.adventuresinministry.com/ympodcast/020
*It will give you more ideas on how to safeguard your children including using Covenant Eye or Curbi app.

This can be found on Chad Landman's website (www.chadl.co) under Resources > Active Digital Parenting. 

iOS Parental Controls

Apps have become the ecosystem of communication, interaction, and gameplay since the iteration of the iPhone five years ago. Apple pioneered the App Store concept - they we're necessarily the first, they were just the first ones who did it right. Everyone has an App Store now.

There's two very important differences in Google (Android)'s Play Store and Apple's iOS App Store.

Apple's iOS app store requires a thorough and lengthy process of certifications to just get in the Store. Google does not, to a certain extent. Apple will not approve anything with porn or inappropriate material. Google doesn't care much for this, they are much more lax in approval of apps.

Google's Android OS, in fact, has an option to sideload apps from third-party sources, meaning that virtually anyone can make an app for Android and have it be on your device.

To accomplish the same thing, iOS users must do a bit of reprogramming called "Jailbreaking." Jailbreaking is dangerous and not authorized by Apple because of malware, viruses, and other concerns that may slow down, harm, or even brick your phone (making it unusable). Google allows you to do this with flick of a switch in Settings.

Now, am I saying that Android is less safe than iOS? Yes. In my opinion, it is.

I love Android, I love it's openness, I love the fact that I can tinker with it, but in my opinion, it is not an OS that is meant for teens and children, because it's much easier for them to figure out that you can get to bad stuff.


## App Store: Things to Look Out For

1. **Make sure your child hasn't jailbroken his/her device.** Sometimes they get their friends to do it, other times they can do it themselves. It's as easy as downloading the correct software, plugging up your device, and letting it do its work. Jailbreaking appeals to kids because it allows them to get "free apps" or "free music", but what's happening is that they're jailbreaking their phones and iPods and opening themselves up to all sorts of apps that have not been approved by Apple - some harmless, some not so much. Apple will not work on a phone if they see it's been jailbroken. Jailbreaking isn't against the law, and it won't necessarily harm your device or cause it to go nuts, but the wrong apps or software downloaded CAN do that. It's better for your child to not have a jailbroken device.

2. **Make sure your child knows not to sign into someone else's account.** I was on a trip to Oklahoma with another youth group doing some relief work and realized that it was pretty commonplace for kids to let one another sign in to each other's accounts on their phones and iPods so they could download the apps that the other has purchased, in a sense creating a loophole to get apps for free. This is inventive, but it is stealing. Just like illegally downloading a movie or song, downloading an app you didn't pay for is stealing. Not to mention that this gives another device access to your account. I had this happen to a young man in my youth group - he let a friend sign on to his family's account, forgot to sign it out, and his friend racked up over $400 of apps in just two days. Getting that money back from Apple is nearly impossible.

3. **Make sure you have parental controls set on whatever account and device your child uses.** Some parents opt for using the "Put in the password" method, meaning every time your child wants to download an app they have to come to you and let you put in the password. That's clunky, annoying, and every parent I've ever known gets tired of it and just tells the kid their password, so it defeats the purpose of having the password at all. Now, the new fingerprint scanner in the iPhone 5S that just came out last week opens up all sorts of possibilities for you being able to approve app purchases. For example, you can set your fingerprint on your child's device so that only you can approve a purchase with your finger. You can let you child know the alternate passcode to get into the phone. The fingerprint (or Touch ID) is going to be interesting for parents as they find new ways to manage what your children can do online and in the app store.

Settings > General > Restrictions

The method I would recommend is the "Observation" method. This method allows you to observe what Free apps your child downloads. If you and your child are on a different account, that's okay. You can sign into their account via the bottom link on the App Store and then you can go to **Updates > Purchased** and see every app they've downloaded, free or not. Make sure that the password isn't changed on this account.

## Settings 

You can  limit them from using any Parental Controls settings found under Settings > General > Restrictions.

Safari: You can eliminate Safari from the phone. Beware: there are other browsers that you can download as apps that let you navigate the internet, as well as some built-in browsers of apps that let you do the same thing. Disabling Safari means that the app doesn't even appear on the phone any more.

Camera: doesn't allow you to use the Camera app to take pictures.

Facetime: Facetime is like Skype - realtime video chatting. You can disable this as well.

iTunes: Prevents them from opening the app and purchasing movies, books, music, and music videos.

Installing Apps: Completely deletes the App Store icon from the phone.

Deleting Apps: will not give the option of deleting apps. Want to catch your child red-handed? This feature is great because they can't uninstall apps they've downloads that they don't want you to see.

Siri/Explicit Language: The EL tag here only pertains to Siri. Siri is an automated assistant, like a glorified and voice-activated Google. Probably just be better to turn this off for safety.

Airdrop: Airdrop is a local-area file sharing utility. Say you and your friend are having lunch and he or she takes a picture or has a file they want to send you. Using Bluetooth, they can send a file directly to you via Airdrop. The file doesn't go through email, servers, services, or anything else. It's directly from device to device.

Ratings: If you allow access to downloading music and movies and such, you can customize what ratings your child can access. Special attention to Apps, and In-App Purchases - I would turn off In-App purchases. This may save you a lot of money in the future.

(Apple has heard complaints about companies making it too easy for kids to make in-app purchases, and they're making it harder to do.)

Websites: You can Limit Adult Content here and apply this filter so that your teen can't see any adult sites, or you can go so far as to only allow certain sites to be accessed. Apple even gives you a short list of sites to start with.

Require Password: I would set this to Immediately - it will require a password at all times.

Privacy: You can see here in these settings what Apps have access to what. Does Facebook access your location? Does Twitter access your photos? You can tailor this or lock it down completely and see what works best for you and your child.

Privacy Settings: these are varied between specific apps you have on your device. You can also see what apps have access to your Twitter and Facebook accounts.

Allow Changes: on you child's device, I would just put this to No. Then that does not allow them to make changes.

Game Center: Mostly harmless, but I would make sure to stress that your child only adds friends they know personally. Game Canter does not allow communication or messaging, but it's best to be on the safe side.

Hope you take these ideas and settings recommended by Chad and use them to help safeguard your kids. Be active. Be intentional. Be ruthless.

For more articles by Chad Landman on Active Digital Parenting: 
http://start2finish.org/category/active-digital-parenting/