Creative Guide for Teachers & Parents

SUBJECT & DISCUSSION IDEA #2 - Do you pay attention to privacy settings?

Did you know that there are over 350,000,000 active users on Facebook, who check their accounts at least once a week? Did you know that if your Facebook profile is "open" every one of those users can see everything you post on your page?

In 2009, MySpace announced that it had kicked 90,000 registered sex offenders off of their site - registered means they've been caught. How many registered sex offenders do you think may be on other social networking sites? Perhaps more importantly, how many creepy people are using these sites who haven't been caught for their actions?

If you have an open profile on any social networking site, it's a good idea to go into the privacy settings and mark it "closed" - that way only the friends on your list can see the details of your profile. The privacy settings give you lots of options - you can even limit what different friends see - for example, you can adjust the settings so that only good friends can see everything and you can limit the information that casual acquaintances see. Do you have friends on your list who you don't know at all? Check out Subject and Discussion Idea #3!

Discussion idea:

John carefully chooses who he allows on his "friends" list on his favourite social networking site, but he's never looked at the privacy settings. The default is an "open" profile, so his profile is open for everyone who uses that social networking tool. Discuss what this means.