00:47 - There are certain things that you need to make sure you keep private
01:11 - Make sure your public profile does not provide any personal information
01:48 - Checking in is not necessarily the safest thing to do
02:08 - Keeping the information private
02:21 - make sure you don't provide personal information about your child
02:36 - Your address, make sure it's never online
03:09 - Utilize privacy options
Hi there, Bow-Tiger world. This is Harper Jones, and you're watching “Saturdays with Harper,” and as you guys know, I’d like to talk to you guys about sort of relevant information, things that are coming up in my own life, things that I think you guys would be interested in that are good topics to discuss. And I came across one this week, and this actually happened to me, and I thought this would be something good to talk to you, the parents, about and just discuss with you guys. And it is the use of social media when you have kids.
We're going to use Facebook as an example. As you guys know, I'm on Facebook, I'm on Twitter, Bow-Tiger is on Twitter. We're posting different things: online video blogs, online podcasting, so I certainly express my views, opinions, and some of my private life online. But there are certain things that you need to make sure you keep private for the safety of your children, the safety of your family.
So using Facebook as a prime example, this is a great example, we’ll start off with your information on Facebook. Facebook does give you the option to leave your phone number out and available for everyone and really provide a lot of detailed information if you want to. I suggest keeping that extremely vague. Make sure that your public profile does not provide any information, any personal information, your birthday, your phone number, address, anything like that. And then, even to friends and family, if they are your friends and family and they're close enough, they probably have that information, so it's not necessary to provide that information online, and if they really need to get a hold of you, they can always do it through a messenger.
The next thing I want to talk about is photos. I love to post photos of my daughter and show everybody how she's doing, how she's doing with school, how she's doing with her friends, and just what we're up to, but you need to be careful on how you provide this information. Checking in is not necessarily the safest thing to do. It starts to provide kind of a timeline of where you're at with your child, and to a predator out there, and I'm not saying that friends and family are predator, but some of that information does leak to be public online, and you never really know when or what's going to be available and to whom.
So keeping the information private, like where you guys are going, the school or the preschool that your children attend, keep that type of information private. It's not necessary for people to know, or to share your photos. And then the other thing you want to do is make sure you don't provide personal information about your child. It's great to say, "Happy birthday," you know, to your child online, if you want to do that, and provide some cute photos, but we don't need to list out their birthday or list out their birth year or any personal information about them.
Your address, that's the big thing, make sure it's never online, and then little personal information about them, because you can actually start to build...somebody, if they were a predator, could actually start to build basically a profile of your family and your child, and you want to make sure that you avoid that at all costs. And just keeping your personal information personal and private is the best way to do that. You can still use social media, you can still share what you want to, but make sure that you take the proper precautions before posting online.
Facebook gives you the opportunity to have a lot of privacy options, as far as photos go, as far as personal information, posts that go public or private, so definitely utilize those, and just make sure that you're using social media safely and in a way that it will not affect your family in a negative manner.
Thanks so much, and if you guys are watching this video on Facebook or YouTube, I'd ask that you check out our video blog on bow-tiger.com, and we'll see you next week. Thanks.
