Tips for Helping Young People Navigate Social Networking

We know that how young people present themselves online is as important as how they choose to present themselves at school, in the community and beyond.

But how can we, as the adults in their lives, help them to navigate the complex world of social networking?

Here are a few tips, taken from Motivation, Education and Transformation: The Change Agent’s Guide to Reaching Our Youth and Lifting Them Higher, the book I co-wrote with Dr. Marina V. Gillmore and Dr. Monique R. Henderson:

• Explain to young people that because of the way the internet works, nothing posted online is never truly private, and nothing is truly gone, even when we think we have deleted it.
•  Model appropriate social networking behavior yourself. We can’t expect young people to make wise choices online if we do not have the restraint and judgment to do so ourselves.
• Be mindful of how much access to social networking young people have. The more time they spend on such sites, the more likely they are to make the mistake of posting something on a whim.
• Require young people to prove that they can handle social networking and let them know that their activity will be monitored, unannounced, on a regular basis.
• Be sure to encourage young people to socialize outside of social networking. As I travel, I am seeing a growing number of young people who seem unable to socialize or communicate verbally. Teachers, youth workers and other change agents I know have told me the same thing, and we are beginning to believe that some of this behavior is the result of spending more time online and less time interacting face-to-face.
• Talk to young people about basic online safety, including not posting personal information about their whereabouts, their phone number, address, birthday or other personal information.
• Require young people to configure all social networking settings to the most private settings and remind them not to choose to make their information available to anyone they do not know personally.

By taking these steps, we can begin to empower young people to present their best selves online – and to stay safe while doing it.