Financial Safety: Kids and Social Media
11/29/2023
Financial Safety: Kids and Social Media
Social media has played an important role in connecting people all over the world, and the kids in your life may be interested in using these sites. Internet safety is a topic that is top of mind for many parents, and it’s important to talk to kids about protecting their information and their family’s finances when using social media. Today we’d like to discuss some safe habits you can share with the kids in your life.
- Guard Their Identity and Personal Information
Perhaps the most important lesson for children to learn regarding social media is to guard their identity and their personal information. For their protection, children need to keep their personal details personal. Never give personal details to someone you have not met in real life. Even the most innocuous details, such as favorite color or school mascot (answers to common security questions) can lead to account hacking, fraud, or identity theft if they fall into the hands of someone with bad intentions.
Good Habits: Using random screennames, limiting photos with any identifying details, never giving out personal information, and using inaccurate or unexpected answers to when setting up account security questions.
- Review Security Settings
Parents may want to review their child’s privacy settings at the time of sign up and continue to review periodically in case the platform updates their settings. Some platforms only allow users on your child’s friend list to contact them via messaging systems. Many cases of fraud start when a stranger contacts a victim through their social media messages and fishes for personal information. However, it is important to remind your child that viruses or spyware can come via fraudulent links sent from those on their friends list who have also become victims of fraud. Just like with text scams, children should be wary of any links sent to them and never click one without properly vetting it.
Red Flags: Asking for personal or financial information, messages from strangers, links sent via messenger, security settings that allow any user access to your child’s page.
- Discuss the Importance of Protecting Financial Information
Many teens and pre-teens use the internet or social media to play games or follow trends in their favorite fields, like fashion or technology. Social media platforms, by design, frequently pressure (or ‘influence’) users to buy items. Your children may be old enough to have their own debit card, and it’s good to talk to them about peer pressure and evaluating whether a shopping site or gaming platform is safe to purchase from. You could also discuss responsible spending and saving.
If your child does not have their own debit card, make sure they know to discuss any purchase they are interested in making with their parent or guardian and not to take their parent or guardian’s card for payment without asking. If you are okay with using your card to buy something your child would like (and you have safely vetted the site in question), you as the cardholder should be the one to initiate the transaction, not the child. Even things like “free” trials that require a credit card can often pose problems for pre-teens and teens not used to reading the fine print.
Reminder: Advertisements for deals that seem too good to be true usually are! Shopping habits that protect users from scams are important, and young internet users can take those habits into adulthood.
Discussing safe use of the internet with your children is important, and the good news is that many these tips will help them stay safe online for many years to come!