Many parents nowadays are concerned about the question of how to tear their children away from social networks and electronic gadgets. They are reasonably concerned about their physical and psychological health and safety.
Social networks allow teenagers to communicate, learn interesting and useful information, find study publics, discuss your hobbies (movies, music, dancing, singing, sports, games, etc.) and much more. Social networks for teenagers are an integral part of their socialization.
But despite the obvious attractiveness, it is necessary to be aware of the dangers of using social networks at this age. It is known that children have a lower level of critical attitude to news, videos and messages than adults. Children are more trusting, which means they are a convenient “object” for influences.
In view of the still unformed psyche, the most dangerous for adolescents are the so-called suicidal groups, anorexic groups, recruitment groups for banned organizations, pornography, communication with pedophiles and scammers, cyberbullying (bullying).
A child in the social network: threats and dangers
Suicidal groups
Since 2015, groups began to appear massively on social networks, where children are persuaded to commit suicide online. In them, children are forced to commit suicide by broadcasting a video of this on the Internet. According to law enforcement such groups employ professional psychologists who methodically drive children and adolescents to suicide.
Moderators of death groups themselves often find teenagers who are already suffering from depression and do not hide their suicidal thoughts on their personal page (they listen to specific music, post photos depicting death, are interested in the “emo” subculture. Next, a harsh manipulative effect on the psyche is used. teenagers.
The most dangerous thing is that the parents of the dead children did not notice any oddities in the behavior of the child.
According to Novaya Gazeta, in just six months (from November 2015 to April 2016), 130 teenagers committed suicide because of such groups.
More than 9,000 pages and websites promoting suicide have already been blocked on the network by Roskomnadzor. But in place of one closed one, immediately, instantly, others appear.
How parents can recognize the risk of suicide
The most important sign of suicidal tendencies is a sharp change in the behavior of a teenager. If your child seeks isolation, becomes uncommunicative, sad, loses his former interests and hobbies, stops meeting friends, starts skipping school - take action urgently!
Weight loss groups leading to anorexia
The most popular group has 4.5 million subscribers, and its ex-admin died of anorexia a few years ago.
Communities for extreme weight loss are popular on Vkontakte, as it is on this network that teenage girls hang out. Today, by searching for "Anorexia" you can find more than 1,700 communities, and this is not counting some groups with "encrypted" names that are closed to outsiders.
Teenagers sit down on various diets and promote their lifestyle among their friends. Thus, the number of thin people is growing rapidly. For them, it is like a drug that can also lead to death.
Signs of the influence of these groups on the minds of adolescents
The following signs of anorexia will help you recognize your child's dangerous tendencies in time. Decreased appetite due to dissatisfaction with one's own appearance. Increased time spent in front of the mirror. Decreased immunity, body weakness: dizziness and chronic fatigue, abdominal pain (especially after eating). Increased fragility and dryness of hair, as well as their loss, violation or cessation of menstruation. Take a closer look at your child, his interest in diets and nutrition, his unhealthy anxiety about the number of calories consumed. Whether following famous models in the fashion world or having an over-interest in fashion.
Recruitment to banned organizations and groups
There is a recruiting network for international terrorist organizations on the Internet. Nationality and religion for these people does not matter. Recruiters work everywhere, and especially through social networks. According to ig.net, about 80% of cases of recruitment to terrorist organizations occur through social networks and forums.
Recruiters are top class professionals, often of Slavic appearance, with a European education. Being experienced psychologists, they know exactly how to make a person act in their own interests.
The recruiter is looking for clues to a particular person, identifying and pressing on his pain points. Information from a page on a social network, profiles on websites and forums, talkativeness on the network, when teenagers themselves share their personal experiences with unfamiliar people, especially help them in this.
Signs of influence on a teenager and the work of recruiters
Your teenager has become aggressive. Often talks about injustice and the need for radical changes in his life or the lives of others. If his judgments have become harsh and aggressive towards society - most likely he is under the influence of a recruiter and it is necessary to check this and show more attention to the child, take a closer look at his environment and friends, with whom he communicates and spends more time, find out a new circle of his dating and then look at the situation. Engage him in useful work that would teach him useful skills.
Pornography
According to Kaspersky Lab, “adult” content worldwide accounts for 1.5% of the total Internet activity of children and adolescents. Pornography harms the psychological health of children, hinders their full development.
Influences and consequences of porn on teenagers
Early sexual education in adolescents leads to grave consequences. Intimate relationships at an early age are unprotected contacts, random selection and enumeration of partners, sexually transmitted diseases. Undermining the foundations family relations and fidelity, a threat to create strong family relationships, a blow to your family.
Signs of this are changes in the behavior of a teenager: swagger, laxity and the absence of barriers in communicating with the opposite sex. If parents do not respond in any way to changes in behavior, then further interest in teen porn leads to different forms perversions, which are very difficult to eradicate in adulthood, it turns into passionate attraction, mental changes.
Communication of children with pedophiles
A pedophile may introduce himself to a child as an adult, as well as his peer or older teenager.
Experts say that pedophiles try to connect with children by talking to them about topics that interest them: music, movies, school, hobbies. They gain the child's trust and then start talking intimately to make the child believe that close relationships with "older friends" are normal. They play on the child's curiosity by talking to them about sex, which parents often don't do.
There is another danger that few people talk about. In social networks, publics and groups proliferate, where children are forced to be photographed in an obscene way by persuasion or blackmail.
Signs of a child's contact with pedophiles
Identifying child sexual abuse is more difficult, but you should look for the following signs:
- Sudden sexual manifestations. This is expressed in the desire to touch one's own or someone else's intimate places;
- The appearance of a great fear of other people. Fear of going to all sorts of events that the child previously attended with pleasure. Strong desire of the child not to be near people.
Communication of a child with scammers
An unreasonable life in virtual reality can cause a loss of money. Even adults often fall for various tricks of scammers on the Internet. What can we say about children who do not yet have the necessary baggage of knowledge and experience behind them.
Signs of fraud with your children
Do you keep track of what the teenager spends the money you give out? Admitting to a teenager that he was deceived is hard, it hurts his pride. It is not easy even for an adult to tell that he was “swindled”, therefore it is difficult to identify these troubles in children. Try to remember how much pocket money you allocate and what that money is spent on. It happens that teenagers, not having received money from their father, go to their mother, grandmother, grandfather. Ask them if there was a disbursement of funds, how much, and you will understand the real monthly budget of your child.
Internet time limits. According to the psychologies.ru portal, less than 25% of parents impose even minimal restrictions on the use of the Internet for their child, while more than 70% of children access the Internet every day (about a third have their own profiles in social networks).
Teach your child about the dangers of social media. To avoid the above problems, psychologists advise parents to establish good contact with children. Adults are often unaware of the problems in a child's life and do not know how to ensure their online safety.
Setting up a child / teenager's computer to work with the Internet. Experts advise allowing the use of social networks only on stationary computers and laptops, where special “parental supervision and control” programs are used to ensure the safety of children and adolescents. These apps help track your child's online activity, block inappropriate websites, and set time limits for using the Internet.
Use the monitoring program - to monitor the work on the computer. It helps parents recognize dangers in time, works online and in real time.
With monitoring programs you:
- save children from fatal mistakes
- understand what is happening with your child
- protect the mental health of the child
- keep peace in the family.
How many parents effectively control their child's Internet life? How well do adults understand what children are interested in in the global network, what they are looking for, with whom they communicate? And how can the younger generation be protected from threats that, from virtual ones, can turn into quite real ones? These issues were discussed during a video conference that was recently held in Petrozavodsk as part of the Safe Internet project. It was attended by teachers from Petrozavodsk schools, and the head of the network content analytics group at Kaspersky Lab Konstantin Ignatiev acted as an expert.
Meeting within the framework of the "Safe Internet" project. Photo: storonniki.info
As Ignatiev said, not so long ago, the company conducted a study among almost a thousand families throughout Russia (a fairly standard sample for opinion polls - ed.). We interviewed both parents and children, and the results in comparison turned out to be interesting.
- About 85% of children to the question: "Can you do without a gadget today?" They say, "No, I can't do it." This is very important point: for children, the Internet and gadgets are a new reality, like electricity in a socket for you and me, water in a tap. They were born with this, and they can’t imagine life without a gadget, without the Internet,” the expert explains.
That is, in fact, the vast majority of children spend almost everything on the global network. free time. But when a question on this topic was asked to parents, it turned out that only a quarter of fathers and mothers are aware of this fact. About a third of parents do not control at all how much time a child spends with a smartphone, tablet, Ignatiev notes.
- The number of children who spend time on the Internet constantly increases most sharply at the age of 12-13 years. And just at this time, parents begin to think that the child is already an adult, you can weaken the instructions, control. But it is in adolescence that Internet threats that are dangerous to the life and health of a child rise to their full height. If he does not know what to do and how to react in certain cases, he can get into a very dangerous situation, says the specialist.
Another disturbing result of the study: almost half of the children admit that they hide something from their parents about their Internet life.
What does a child do on the Internet?
When asked what you do on the global network, the most popular responses from children are: “Playing games” or “Chatting with friends.” At the same time, about 45% of children answered that they also use the World Wide Web for educational purposes, prepare for school, read the news. So, not everything is so bad: a fairly significant part of the younger generation uses the Internet for self-development and education.
There are also statistics based on web surfing research: what resources children visit, where they spend the most time. These data confirm that the most popular place is occupied by means of Internet communication: social networks, chats, forums, sites where you can download instant messengers.
On the second - all the same computer games. In particular, the Steam platform.
— This is a huge community, a global service, millions of users. Here you can chat, buy games, make in-game purchases,” the expert says.
Very close in the ranking is such an alarming and dangerous category as alcohol, tobacco, narcotic substances. But these statistics need to be approached carefully. It is far from a fact that the vast majority of children go to sites where, for example, drugs are offered. Perhaps the child just went to some neutral resource to read what drugs are. Or even to the site, where they just warn about the destructive effect narcotic substances and strongly warn against them. But according to statistics, interest in the topic has been recorded. If this became known to adults - parents and teachers, it is necessary to understand each specific case, and not just turn off the Internet, take away the phone.
“This will only set the child against the adult and encourage him to hide his activities, activity on the Internet,” the expert believes.
Of course, children actively watch videos on the Internet, listen to audio files, go to sites where you can buy any goods or services (here it is important to ensure that the child does not have access to adult bank cards, so that he does not make purchases in a fit of online shopping ).
But resources from the “only for adults” series, that is, erotica and pornography, are only in seventh, penultimate place, that is, they do not seem to be very popular among children and adolescents. But there is no need to flatter yourself, the expert believes. Let's remember once again which services are in the first place - social networks. And they have a lot of different content, including completely non-childish content.
Dangerous ties
Children and social networks are a separate big topic. As Ignatiev said, about 40% of elementary (!) Grade students already have pages on social networks. Yes, most of these services prescribe in the rules that users cannot be less than 14 years old. But children easily bypass these restrictions by indicating a false age during registration. In high school, teenagers already have accounts in social networks almost without exception, their absence is rare, isolated cases.
What in this case very worried about the experts? First of all, here are the data: approximately 70% of schoolchildren in social networks receive friendship offers from adults they do not know. And almost half of teenagers add such dubious contacts as "friends" and communicate with them. Moreover, as Konstantin Ignatiev said, his personal communication with schoolchildren during lectures on Internet security shows that there are always several children who admit that they agreed to meet with such adult “friends” on the social network in reality.
This is one of the most dangerous situations, the expert believes. It can end with anything - for example, the kidnapping of a child. An attacker can also persuade a minor to have intimate relationships, fix them on photos and videos, and then blackmail them.
Cyberbullying, oversharing, sexting
However, it is worth talking about the dangers of the Internet in more detail. Experts even have terms for their designation.
For example, sexting. This phenomenon, of course, occurs among adult Internet users, but for teenagers it can be truly devastating. A typical situation, as a rule, is as follows: a girl and a boy are in a romantic relationship, in a fit of spirit they begin to send each other their photos of a candid nature with declarations of eternal love. And then there is a quarrel, one of this couple in love, out of revenge, resentment or jealousy, puts the intimate photos sent to him on public display. For a teenager affected in this situation, the psychological trauma can be so serious that suicidal consequences are not ruled out, the expert warns.
Cyberbullying, in other words, bullying by other users, can become just as dangerous for a child. Of course, even in “prehistoric” times, that is, before the Cyber Age, there were children who became objects of humiliation and ridicule from classmates. But then this situation was most often limited by the walls of the school, and the child had a chance to isolate himself from it in his free time from school, not to experience pressure 24 hours a day. Now, given how much time children spend in the virtual space, such pressure can become permanent and catastrophic in its consequences.
Another threat is oversharing. This is the desire to tell about yourself in social networks those details that are absolutely not worth knowing to a wide audience. Children willingly post detailed information about themselves on social networks: school number, mobile number, family ties, sometimes even home address. Juvenile netizens shoot videos for YouTube, streaming is gaining more and more popularity, when a child broadcasts in real time on social networks what he is doing now, showing everyone who wants a home environment. Children and geotags are used, which allow anyone to fix where the child and (or) his family is at the moment. All this plays into the hands of attackers - from banal thieves who figure out rich apartments, and ending with criminals who can encroach on the life and health of a child.
The mass use of the Internet has exacerbated such problems as the involvement of children and adolescents in sects, in radical extremist organizations. The expert also recommends paying special attention to the so-called lists - groups in the global network, where children are invited to hang out not in the virtual, but in real life. Very often, such meetings are accompanied by the use of alcohol and drugs.
Of course, one of the most serious threats is the violation of the sexual integrity of children. According to the expert, in the United States, for example, about 800 thousand pedophiles have been identified and are under appropriate control, while those malefactors who have not yet come to the attention of law enforcement agencies are not taken into account. The expert does not exclude that in our country the number is about the same. On the Web, people with similar inclinations are divided into two categories. Some are looking for meetings with children in reality. But there are those who are trying to persuade underage users to send their candid photos and videos. As Ignatiev notes, such illegal content has stable consumers, and this is a real criminal business.
Often, in order to involve children, attackers disguise themselves as teenagers and create fake accounts. Another option is that children are lured to participate in ostensible photo model contests, promising to reward the most candid shots with prizes like new iPhone models and so on.
Digital Immunity
How to keep a child safe? Of course, first of all, parents and teachers should communicate with children: it is necessary to explain why you should never, in any situation, take candid, intimate photos, and even more so send them to someone, why you need to be very careful about who you add to friends and so on.
It is very important, the expert notes, that adults who love the child and are responsible for him/her be in touch with him/her, using, among other things, the means of communication familiar to the child – the same social networks, instant messengers. So, it makes sense to create a family group on a social network or a chat, a class group, so that in an emergency or dangerous situation, the child can always contact his parents or teacher.
In addition, it is necessary to take seriously the privacy settings of the child's account in social networks, set safe modes in video viewing services, in search engines. This can be done, as they say, "manually", or you can use special programs parental control. Such programs allow you to track the use of gadgets and applications, the publication of the child in social networks, changes in the lists of friends, block access to unwanted sites and content.
And finally, some more statistics. As part of a study conducted by Kaspersky Lab, 23% of parents said they do not go to their child's page on the social network. Another 44% say that they have not seen disturbing content. And only 24% noted that they do not like or are disturbed by the people with whom the child communicates on the global web, the publics to which he is subscribed or the posts that he publishes. That is, adults so far clearly do not adequately assess the role that the Internet plays in the life of the younger generation, and even more so the possible threats that the global web is fraught with.
"Safe Internet" is a project of supporters of the United Russia party, aimed at informing the pedagogical and parent communities about the types of Internet threats for children and methods for protecting them. The project is implemented with the expert support of Kaspersky Lab.
Scoliosis prevention.
Make sure your student wears a backpack with straps on both shoulders. During the break between lessons, invite the child to walk around with a book on his head, imagining himself a sultan. Watch the height of the table and chair, as well as the firmness of the mattress your child sleeps on.
Today, social networks occupy a rather big cell in a person's life. This also applies to our children. It can even be said that a child is more influenced by social networks than an adult. Living online has both pros and cons.
Minuses
Today it seems that children and social networks are inseparable concepts. Every child, even a very small one, has a phone or tablet with Internet access. Good or bad - depends on the dosage. It's like with a medicine - depending on the chosen dose, it can improve a person's health, or it can destroy it. The time that children spend on social networks is the main indicator of usefulness.
The main problem of the Internet is the absence of life. Virtual communication is gradually replacing the live one, and this is very dangerous for a person who has not yet formed, whose speech, communication skills, and so on are just being formed. In social networks, everything is faceless and too simple: write a message, send and receive a response. In such communication there are no real emotions, no facial expressions, an excited voice, a sparkle in the eyes, but there are only letters and emoticons. Checking your personal page has become a kind of daily rite, and for some it has become an addiction. This applies to both adults and the younger generation.
Among other things, the impact of social networks on children is not limited to psychological changes, the health of the baby also suffers. Many hours of "gatherings" at the computer worsen vision, lead to hypodynamia, loss of communication skills. It is worth emphasizing that full “introduction” into the network is a direct path to autism. Over time, a real addiction arises and its constant companions - irritability, isolation, aggressiveness, conflicts with parents and terrible tantrums when the Internet is turned off for at least an hour. Therefore, parents should remember that everything is useful in moderation.
pros
The benefits that social networks provide for children should not be underestimated. First of all, it is an opportunity to diversify human communication. On the Internet, you can always find new friends and like-minded people according to hobbies and interests. Friends can be found even on the other side of the world. This is so interesting and educational!
But even here you need to know the measure. Parents should first of all worry about the safety of their child and teach him how to communicate correctly. Tell him who you can give your data to and who you shouldn't, tell him about the consequences, give the right examples. Turn off geolocation synchronization, say that different accounts should have different passwords, hide your child's photos from strangers, giving access only to friends. Teach your baby not to brag about new family acquisitions - an expensive phone, a new car or apartment, not to talk about upcoming departures. Often this information becomes the cause of burglaries.
Accounts in social networks allow the child to always be aware of all events. Some teachers even post test dates, various reminders, questions for tests, and so on on their pages. Don't forget about the various study groups where the child can learn a lot of new and useful things. There are also special children's social networks for children, which contain all kinds of information that is of interest to this age group of users.
Ease of communication is the main advantage of the Internet and what attracts inquisitive minds. In social networks, no one forces you to communicate with an unpleasant person, does not teach you how to live and does not read morality ... In addition, the network allows you to share files, watch movies, listen to music. The communicative and informative resource has a great future. He is attractive and incredibly interesting. But he will never be able to replace real life, overflowing with emotions, feelings and tactile manifestations. The social network and children are already inseparable concepts. Nowadays, this is natural, but everything should be in moderation.
Norton experts advise:Did you know that the Internet has always existed for children of this generation? That is, they do not speak, they do not even think in categories: “before the advent of the Internet and after.” Did you know that before you come of age modern child send an average of about 250,000 emails and texts and spend more than 14,000 hours on the Internet?
The Internet opens up endless possibilities: for education, entertainment and, of course, communication with friends on social networks. You can not ignore the dangers that await the child on the Internet. These can be spam, dangerous links that can harm your computer, hackers who seek to find other people's personal data. Maybe ban the internet until your child is an adult? Perhaps this is an extreme measure, because for children there is nothing more desirable than a forbidden fruit. It is better to talk to children about the culture of using the Internet and create general rules behavior on the Internet and communication in social networks.
1.Start with yourself It will be right if your children learn about social networks from you. Create a profile on a social network together, talk about how the social network works. If your child already has a profile on a social network, ask him to show you his page, show interest in your child's activities on the network, add him as a friend.
2.Password is everything Note the importance of a strong password. Do not use your date of birth, name, simple words or key combinations like "123456". Try to encrypt a simple, understandable phrase “were at sea in 2012” using only the first letters of the words - we get “mbnmv2012. Such a password will be very difficult to crack. The stronger the password, the less likely it is that the child's social network account will be hacked. Do not share your passwords with anyone except your parents. Even a close friend should not know a personal password, and if this happens, you need to change the password.
3. Privacy / privacy settings Track or set your own specific privacy settings for your child's profile. Most importantly, the content you post should be accessible only to your child's friends.
4. Your account (account) is only yours Teach the rule to always log out of social networking accounts when you turn off your computer, especially on public or school computers. This is necessary so that no one else can use the account and perform any actions on behalf of the child on the social network.
6. No personal information Teach your child never to post personal information such as phone numbers or home addresses. Simply and easily explain that such information should not appear on the Internet, as there are people who can use it for personal gain
7. Only friends We teach our children not to engage in conversation with strangers on the street. The social network is the same crowded street. No need to reply to messages or friend invites from strangers. You do not need to open messages from strangers, click on links in such messages, as they may contain a virus or other type of cyber threat.
It is best if, when such an unwanted message appears, your child will contact you, and in this case you can either block the suspicious user yourself or contact the social network administration
8. Think first, click later On the Internet, as in real life, there is no “return back” button. The status on the wall or the sent message cannot be deleted. There is such a thing as a cache that stores even deleted information, and a technically literate person can always find the deleted content. Information published on the Internet remains there forever. Therefore, it is important to read carefully and be sure of what the child posts or sends.
9. Advice for parents - From control to trust! The Internet, social networks are the same sphere of life as school or communication with friends. We are against controlling every step of the child on the Internet, but we are sure that parents should know what the child is doing on the Internet, whether they follow the established rules - this is where trust begins.
In order to always be 100% sure that your child is safe on the Internet, there are parental control computer programs. They are made by almost all major manufacturers of antivirus products, for example, Dr. Web, Kaspersky, Norton, Entensys, NiceKit.
For example, the free Norton Online Family program can be easily downloaded from the Internet. Thanks to this program, you will find out what social networks children spend time on, what they search on the Internet, what sites they visit. In addition to controlling social networks, the program can also monitor how children use their phones, register which websites they visit, set control over the time children spend on the computer. The program sends notifications when children try to do something forbidden, for example, open blocked sites.
We live in an advanced age information technologies. Social networks are an integral part of our life. Every phenomenon always has two sides: bad and good. The situation is exactly the same with social networks, where there is positive information, and at the same time, the Internet space is filled with various data and information that are far from always necessary even for adults, and even more so for children.
What measures to take so that the child uses social networks safely for himself, and parents are always aware of the events that happen to him? Let's try to figure this out next.
There are two main aspects of the question:
- Adults and their behavior on the Internet.
- The behavior of a teenager in social networks and his safety.
Quite often you have to watch how literally every second parent posts a variety of information about themselves and their children. Moreover, they perform these actions with incredible frequency, uploading photos almost every half an hour.
It doesn’t even occur to them that the data they provide is an occasion for reflection by many people, among whom not all of them are correct and positive.
It is clear that the Internet is a huge source of information. And very often it is analyzed and collected by people who are unsafe for our children. On the contrary, this information is often used by those who may pose a direct or indirect threat to the child.
If a person who has not the purest thoughts (to put it mildly) wants to establish contact with adults to implement any illegal actions, then it will be more difficult for him to do this, due to the fact that it is more difficult to deceive an adult.
But with children it is much easier to find mutual language and gain confidence. Therefore, parents should really think about what is worth telling and showing on the Internet (number of children, place of residence, etc.), and how often.
For the sake of safety, children must be taught to catch the so-called marker words, which are a signal of anxiety. And at such moments, a teenager should turn to his parents.
Marker words:
- "You are very pretty." This is true for both girls and boys.
- “How often do your parents go away?”
- "What are your relatives doing?"
- "Do you often go somewhere far away?"
- "Do you stay at home alone (alone)?"
It should be noted that such words-markers are constantly supplemented and updated. Criminals have become more inventive and are using new tactics to gain confidence in teenagers. They may also write to the child asking for help or ostensibly asking for advice.
For example: “I have a son (daughter) of the same age as you. And I had difficulties with him / her (description of a situation). Can you tell me how to do it right?" Of course, these are invented situations, told in order to start a correspondence.
The child, flattered by such confidential attention to his person, begins to respond. This is how a correspondence begins, during which there is a gradual removal from the original topic and communication is transferred to a different direction.
Everything happens gradually and unobtrusively, so the child himself does not notice how the initial essence of the conversation is changing, vigilance has already been lost.
These words can sound in different variations, the main thing is to catch the alarm signal in them. Parents should say these phrases to the child each time, reminding them that if they come across them, they should immediately tell adults about it.
All conversations and explanations should be conducted in a friendly atmosphere. Parents should become authorities for their children. Then they will not have a feeling of fear to tell their loved ones about something.
If parents are faced with this kind of situation (described above), then it is necessary to jointly review the account of the person from whom the correspondence originates. Any suspicions should be checked and, if necessary, blocked the account for access or take more drastic measures.
Adults should constantly check what and who writes to their children on social networks. And this is not about ethics, it's about protecting your own children. Such control will not need to be carried out continuously in the future.
The key is the initial stage, when children are still teenagers and do not know about all the dangers of the Internet space. In the future, when a certain experience is accumulated, such a need will disappear by itself.
Smart control, taking into account the interests of the child
Parents should not correct the way their children communicate with friends. In the course of monitoring the correspondence of their children in social networks, parents may encounter something that they do not always want to see (profanity, etc.).
But adults should understand that this is the personal space of the child. This is where ethics, love and trust come into play.
Do not dictate the rules of communication between children and their friends. If these people have friendly communication with your children, and it does not threaten them in any way, you should not exercise strict control here and correct anything. The child should express himself in communication with others, as he considers it necessary and acceptable.
Naturally, there are things that should be classified as forbidden: candid shots (with bare body parts). The child should not lay them out on his own and cut off requests in his direction to show some part of his body in the photo.
This can also include boasting about some new purchases, a photo of the interior of your apartment, in general, everything that can indicate a good material wealth of the family.
Otherwise, you need to understand that teenagers live in their own subculture, and you should not totally control it.
Friendly, open relationships with your children are key. When a teenager has a warm positive relationship with his parents, he does not have to go looking for support somewhere on the side, including in social networks (here it would be appropriate to give an example of the tragedy associated with the Blue Whale group, which operated on the Internet ).
This need will disappear by itself, because the child will know that he can always come and share with his loved ones. Therefore, it is very important to try your best to establish these relationships, through constant friendly conversations. Then there will be no closed topics, and there will always be an opportunity to deal with the current situation.
Summing up all of the above, we can advise parents the following:
Take care of yourself and take care of the safety of your children in the Internet era.