Question

should online social networks do a better job telling their users what information is safe or unsafe to share? What role should parents play in overseeing their child’s involvement in online social networks?

Answer 1

Online social networks have a ethical responsibility to share with its user regarding which information that is safe or unsafe to share like :

a. Personal information can cause threat of identity thief as such information can be easily available to the hackers etc. Therefore, online social networks such as Facebook, twitter etc must warn its users from sharing the personal information such as birthdays, phone number, email address on their profile without updating their account settings.

b. Status updates must be shared carefully and only with the people they know, as sharing it with the strangers can cause threat to the user.

c. Not to reveal the location of the user, social networks must warn its user to not share location information online or they must leave it blank while sharing information on their social networking profiles.

Social networks must provide timely updates regarding the safe and unsafe information that users can share and how they can protect themselves from the potential threats or frauds.

Parents must play following roles in overseeing their child's involvement in online social networks :

a. Monitoring the child's social network profile : As it keep parents updates about what their child share on their profile, their friends and any such other activities.

b. They must talk with their kids regarding how to safely use the online social networks and the things or updates that a child can share or can't share on their profiles.

c. Parents can also use parental control on the system especially for the teens to check, filter, block the information from the child and monitor their online activities.