TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - This week's "Teen Talk" is focused on advice for parents on encouraging teens to spring clean their social media accounts.
WTXL contributor and family therapist Jane Marks:
Teen Talk is going to address several major issues for teens for this coming spring and I think a great place to start is social media. Remember, anything posted is not just an opportunity for friends to see but also for potential colleges, employers and strangers who are often interested in simply stalking.
We are in the age of SnapChat, What's Up, YikYak, Instagram but Facebook is a good place to start. Here are tips to maintain a healthy Facebook status.
1. Make sure that you really are clear about your privacy settings so that only friends and family can read what you post and others cannot post on your timeline. Set your profile to private.
2. Set your picture albums to private. Restrict tagging. You can't control which photos your friends can post on your timeline but you can control which ones actually get a permanent spot on your page.
3. Restrict public search. Limit who can look you up using email addresses or phone numbers you are providing.
4. Report, unfriend and block people who send you abusive posts or messages.
5. Learn to unfollow certain friends' posts. Everyone has at least one annoying Facebook friend who posts too frequently, shares too many pictures or incites too many arguments. When this friend appears on your newsfeed over and over, use the drop down menu and select "unfollow".
6. Delete all private pictures more than two years old. Delete pictures that can be seen as revealing or negative. Delete inappropriate statuses. By all means delete friends you don't know.
7. Review all your posts and tags with activity log. You can "untag" yourself in inappropriate things you've been tagged in.
8. Delete unnecessary apps, because remember many colleges have a way of getting around this.
9. An app that helps address, track and report cyber-harassment is "Stop It". It is rated one of the five apps to change the world by CNN.
10. Create and sort lists. Friend lists are an easy way to view posts from only the people you want. For example, if you prefer to see the feed of only special friends you follow and updates from certain friends you can also create lists of the types of post you see on your newsfeed.
Watch Teen Talk every other Monday at 6:30am on WTXL's Sunrise.
