Cathie Marshall from Burke, Va., is convinced her two teenage boys don’t have secret social media accounts. However, her boys say they know a number of kids who do. They say some kids have two Instagram accounts: one for everyone and another for a few select friends. But that could be asking for trouble.
While kids upload their images perfectly filtered for parents to see, some add content that parents can’t see on their secret accounts.
Download our local news and weather app for iOS Where android — and choose the desired alerts.
“And all of that can go on while you think you’re a vigilant parent and you don’t know they have these other social media accounts,” said Julie Ryan Evans, senior editor of SecurityNerd.com.
These hidden accounts between friends may start out innocent enough, but there are so many dangers lurking on social media, including predators and cyberbullies. Without a parent’s ability to monitor these accounts, it can be downright scary.
“You know the kind of emotional toll all of this can take, and kids use it for mean reasons by posting mean comments and stuff you don’t see,” Evans said. “And then, you know, your child’s emotions go up and down, and all the while there’s this account where it’s happening.”
Evans said kids know it’s easy to create additional accounts because there’s no age verification. There are some limits on the number of accounts you can open, but kids can get new email accounts just as easily.
So what can you do to protect your children?
Be a detective
“If you look through their followers and see who their followers follow, you can sometimes find patterns,” Evans said. “They often self-follow so they don’t use their name, but you can sort of do some research.”
To have a conversation
“Really just letting them know how important it is, what the long-term implications are of what they post, who they interact with, and how it all really matters,” Evans said.
Set parental controls
iPhone lets you set up Family Sharing to monitor your kids’ screen time and set time limits and content restrictions.
If your child has an Android, you can create a child account that lets you control what kind of access they’re allowed to things like apps and social media sites.
TikTok recently rolled out new parental controls, including options to turn off comments on your kids’ videos and turn off the search feature.
