Keeping your teen safe on Facebook

For teenagers, unaware of the consequences of their online actions, using Facebook incorrectly could potentially leave a digital trail that might follow them all the way through high school, college and into the real world.

What’s more, there are also creepy people out there on social networks. Here’s what you can do to keep them away from trouble.

First, you should sit down with children and explain that anything -- stress the word anything --they post can and will be used against them on the Internet.

This includes private messages and photos they believe are visible only to friends and comments they leave on people’s pictures or status updates.

Although all of these things can be set to private, a friend-turned-enemy could take a screenshot of something your teenager has shared, then send it around school for all to jeer at.

Teenagers should assume that there is no such thing as private on Facebook. You will still want to go through your child’s Facebook settings to make them as private as possible.

To begin, click on the arrow in the top right and then scroll down to Privacy Settings. Once inside, the first thing you will want to do is ensure that anything your child posts on Facebook is only visible to Friends, not the Public.

Once you have done this, methodically go through every setting -- be aware, there are dozens of them -- and change your child’s account to only be visible to Friends. Leave the “Who can send you friend requests?” tab open to ‘Everyone’ for the first week or so. Let him corral friends, then you can change it to only allow Friends of Friends later.

To prevent an excerpt from your child’s Facebook page from showing up in public search engines be sure to go to the Apps tab in the privacy settings and click on “Public search.” Then make sure you disable “Enable public search.”

One of the most important privacy settings is how personal information is used in ads. This is where Facebook uses you, or your likes, in advertisements on the Web site. For example, if you like Coca-Cola, Facebook will show your friends ads for Coke using your name as part of the advertisement.

To change this, click on the Facebook Ads tab. Then click on the two links that say “Edit third party ad settings” and “Edit social ads setting” and change these options to “No one.”

A friend mentioned that her child had logged into the new Facebook account on a friend’s iPhone that day. This, you should stress, is a very bad idea. If your child forgets to log out, the person can now see everything on their Facebook page, including private chats and messages.

Oh, and one last thing: Friend your teenager on Facebook.