Is Social Media Monitoring a Parent's Responsibility?

Our  feature on Woburn Patch is part of an initiative on our Patch sites to reach out to moms and families.

Woburn Patch invites you and your circle of friends to help build a community of support for mothers and their families right here in Woburn.

Each week in , our Woburn Patch Moms Council of experts and smart moms will take your questions, give advice and share solutions.

So grab a cup of coffee and settle in as we start the conversation today with a question from a local mom and an answer from our Woburn Patch Moms Council: 

Q. What do you believe a parent's responsibility is as it relates to the monitoring of their kids' social media involvement? Discussion of any social networking site is welcome and encouraged.

A. I believe that parents should be fully-involved in what social media sites their kids are on and how they use them. I firmly believe that 12-years-old is too young for Facebook, and yet I see a lot of my daughter's classmates on there. I don't think kids should be using Twitter since it is a very public forum and you cannot set very many privacy settings. Anyone can see and follow the tweets of your kids, and I've shown my kids that how that works and explained to them what networks are OK and what are not.

There are a couple of kid-friendly sites that my daughter uses; one of them is called Whatswhat.me. It mimics Facebook, but is for kids only. You need to prove you are a kid before you log in (web cam screen shot) and then there is a message wall, games, videos and groups to join, watch and play. You also need a parent's permission to friend anyone who is not in your age group.

While I realize that social-networking is also available on kids' phones and everywhere else, and that you cannot always control what your kids will get into, making them very aware of how they all work and monitoring what they are doing is key to keeping them safe.