Putting Young Heads on Old Shoulders

A Social Media Guide for Parents

Young Heads on Old Shoulders Group: Joy Ogundele, Hannan Pamplin, Michelle Power, Jessica Quigley, Katie Reen, Clodagh Reilly, Rebecca Gilligan & Caoimhe Schaefer with IT Teachers Mr. Fogarty, Miss Waterstone and Joanne Sweeney burke & Jillian O’Toole of Digital Training Institute. Photo by John McDonnell.

What is Social Media

• Regular media is like a one way street...you can read a newspaper, watch TV or listen to the radio in order to be informed, entertained or engaged. But you can't comment or give your own views.

• So social media is like a two-way street… you can give your opinion,share links with friends, retweet other people's comments and express your own views and opinions.

• Social media sites are the platforms that allow you to do this e.g Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Blogs, Youtube

Parents should know the rules to male the rules

Parents need to:

1. Learn about technologies -so that they can ask the right questions and understand the answers.

2.Make a contract - agree on the ground rules of social media activity with your teenagers and sign the social media contract.

3.Make sure you and your teenager understand each other in order to follow the rules of the website or application.

Making Ground Rules

• What sites will you allow your teen use?• When is your teen allowed to use them?• How can your teen access them?• Must a parent be my friend/follower in order to monitor

their teens activity?• How much time will you allow your teen to spend on

Social Media daily?• Will you put restrictions on the content your teen is

allowed to publish?• Will the rules be more flexible if your teen adheres to the

best practice use guidelines developed by TY in conjunction to Digital Training Institute?

The Fundamentals of Social Media

• Social Media sites are places to share your opinion, share links, chat with friends and become the publisher of your own content.

• Parents should know that Facebook, Twitter and Instagram all require children to be at least 13 years old to join. This is because of the ‘Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act’ which stops companies from taking personal information about children under the age of 13.

About Facebook

1. You should know that everything you upload to Facebook can be viewed through Google, even after it is deleted.

2. Anyone can see what you share online, it is important to protect your Online Reputation.

3. Facebook can help you keep in touch with friends and family that live abroad.

Setting up a Facebook Account

1. Choose or make a new e-mail address that you will use for accessing Facebook and other Social Media sites.

2. Go to www.facebook.com and click ‘sign up’.

3. Enter your details, name, age, etc.

4. Ensure your privacy settings are secure. These can be edited under the heading ‘Privacy’ which you will find in your settings.

Why You Should Ensure Your Privacy Settings are Secure

• To ensure that nobody else can see your page and your personal details.

• So that you can choose who can see your page by accepting or denying friend requests.

How to set your Privacy

1. Go into settings, which is shown as a gear icon in the top right hand corner of your profile.

2. Click into ‘Privacy Settings’.

3. Here you will find options that you can edit to make your profile more open or more secure.

Twitter

Twitter is a social network which allows you to follow and ‘tweet’ your friends, family and/or celebrity idols and keep up with current affairs.

‘Tweeting’ is just like posting a status on facebook. You type in what you want to say and press ‘Tweet.

• You are limited to 140 characters per tweet. • You can tweet to people by adding their name to the tweet by

typing in @ followed by their name.Hastags (#) are a way of tracking what is saidabout a certain topic. By adding a # to the end of your tweet, people who search the tag can see your tweet, even if they don’t follow you.

Setting up a Twitter Account

1. Go to www.twitter.com

2. Click ‘Create Account’.

3. Enter your details (Name & Date of Birth).

4. Choose a suitable username and password.

5. Send your first Tweet.

Instagram

• Instagram is an online picture and video sharing app for smartphones.

• In January 2011 instagram users started to use hashtags so they could discover specific photographs and users.

• There are 150 million active monthly users and over 55million photos and videos are shared per day.

How to set up an Instagram Account

1. Download app on iphone,smartphone, tablet or go to http://instagram.com/

2. Enter username and password.

3. Take a picture ,crop or add filter if necessary.

4. Search username and follow friends and family.

Snapchat

• Snapchat is a smartphone app which allows you to take pictures of yourself or what you're up to and send them to your friends.

• The picture can show up on their phones for as long as you want it to by changing the timing setting.

• You can also set a “MyStory” which lasts 24 hours and is put up for everyone in your contact list to see.

• The one con is that you can now download apps that lets you save peoples pictures unknown to them.