Over the last few years there has been a dramatic rise in the use of social networking. People from all over the world regardless of any age or race have responded tremendously by registering with the social networking sites. It is indeed the best way to communicate with friends and dear ones when we are staying apart. But the worst part is that there are also considerable numbers of predators who stay online day and night for a catch, targeting kids and teenagers. If your kids do not take precautions while socializing with strangers then they might become the victim anytime.

This means that your need to safeguard your kids by taking proper measures, not forbidding them from using social networking sites. It will enhance your kid’s social development; however you must let them use the socializing site with caution. First thing that you must tell your children before they join any website is that under any condition they should never give out their personal information such as home address, school address, real name, telephone number, credit card details and even the places they hang out. The predators can easily track your location if you disclose any of this information. And if they know you your whereabouts then you are a potential victim for an offline abuse. This also means that you should not allow your kids to sign up membership to the sites with their real names, or creating a personal profile in the social networking with real information. It can be dangerous as all the visitors will be able to view your details, so in case if you create personal profiles then hide the information to yourself and your family. Posting a photograph is equally dangerous as this will make the predators easier to track you down, a few of your personal information and a photograph will be all that they require to locate your whereabouts.

It is advisable that kids should never be friendly to any strangers from the Internet no matter how friendly and sober they seem to be. Also do not trust their profile information and pictures as they all may be fake ones. There are some Social Networking websites which are safe for the kids. Parents should check these websites and encourage your kids to use the site that you recommend of. One such site is Yoursphere, which is a Social networking platform just for kids. They can make friends without fear and enjoy the designs of the platform which are all created by kids. Another good site is Imbee, which is again a platform only for kids. The features of the site are very simple and easy to use allowing the kids to make friends from different regions around the world. They can even share and play games or listen to their favorite music through this platform.

Now the question is can there be any predators here as well, faking to be a kid? The answer is no, the kid’s parents must submit their credit card information along with three images of their kids taken from their computer webcam. Every now and then the administrator will ask for another image of the kid, taken from the same webcam. If the images submitted during the registration do not match with the present image then the user’s account will get permanently deleted.

It is still entirely up to the parents to decide if Social Networking is safe for your children. If you think it is ok for them to get socialized online then make sure you talk to them about internet safety and take all the precautions from your side as well. No matter how safe these sites claim themselves to be, there can be loopholes, you never know.