Tuesday

Youtube Safety Tips For Parents

Parents, with the recent Finland School Shooting incident, it's time for us to discuss Youtube safety tips with our children :

YouTube is a popular video sharing website. Those who are thirteen years old and above are able to register for a free account. Once an account has been registered, you can watch videos, rate them, or discuss them with other members, and share your own videos online.

Besides music videos, cartoon, or other interesting video clips, there are a number of YouTube videos that have adult or violent content. While YouTube tries to ensure that each of these videos is marked, in one way or another, not all are. You may want to put limits on the type of videos your children watch and encourage them to talk to the adults if they feel uneasy about certain video, then you can report the inappropriate content using the "Flag" button located at the bottom of the video.

When sharing videos on YouTube, especially personal video blog which has become so popular with many high school students, it is important to remind your children that they shouldn't, under any circumstance, give out their full name, address, phone numbers and even cell phone numbers. Considering millions of strangers accessing the Youtube worldwide, it would't be wise to expose your face with your full details at the internet.

Do talk to your children about internet predators. Although the dangers of meeting online predators at Youtube aren’t as high as on social networking sites, like MySpace, but the threat still exists. Let your children know that you do not want them to communicate with other YouTube members, as they never know who is behind the computer. If you and your children cannot reach an agreement, you may want to consider blocking the YouTube website from your computers.

By: Rachelle F

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