Social media privacy tips for you and your kids

If you decide to give your kids a smartphone, they'll almost certainly want to get on social media. If your kid is old enough - social media platforms require that users are least 13 years - and you're happy to let them loose online, you'll want to consider the privacy settings for the apps they're using. 

Facebook

Facebook can be a bit of a privacy minefield. There's heaps of options separated across what feels like a million different menus. In reality it's only three, but this is still a task that's best done in a web browser on a PC. 

You can get to the Settings menu by tapping the "down arrow" icon in the top right hand area of Facebook. You'll then find Privacy in the left hand column.

There's two main categories here: Your Activity and How People Find and Contact You.

Under Your Activity, we recommend setting Who can see your future posts to Friends.

If you want to make sure only friends can see your or your child's past posts, you can use the Limit Past Posts feature to retroactively change the audience of anything that's already been shared. 

Under How People Find and Contact You, you can ostensibly lockdown a profile to make it far harder to find. We recommend the following:

• Who can send you friend requests: Friends of friends
• Who can look you up using the email address you provided: Friends
• Who can look you up using the phone number you provided: Friends
• Do you want search engines outside of Facebook to link to your profile: No

You may want to consider setting up your kid's Facebook account not using their full name, or changing it if they already have an account. Using a middle name in lieu of a last name is a popular option that can make your online identity a little harder to find.

You can change the name associated with a Facebook account under General settings. Click Name to bring up the option. If you change your name on Facebook, you won't be able to change it for another 60 days. 

Go back to the left hand menu and click on Face Recognition. This functionality lets Facebook automatically tag a person in photos and videos. It's creepy. Turn it off.

Finally, head down to Ads. Here you can prevent Facebook from serving you ads based on some personal information. The controls area is limited, but you can prevent Facebook from showing ads based on data from partners, based on activity elsewhere around the web, and based on relationship status, employment, and education. 

This page will also show you what Facebook believes you're interested in. Fun fact, I'm apparently into "shapeshifting", "unusual types of gramophone records", and "steel frame". 

Facebook Messenger

There's not too many privacy options to think about when it comes to Facebook Messenger. The only setting you've got real control over is your "availability", which shows whether or not you're online. On mobile, you can find this by:

• Tapping on the profile picture in the top left hand corner of the app
• Scrolling down to Availability
• Tapping Availability, and toggling it to off

It's worth noting that you can sign up to Messenger without needing a Facebook account, if you're okay with using your kids to use Messenger to keep in touch with friends, but don't want them on Facebook proper. To do this, you can setup a new Messenger account using a phone number when you first launch the app.

For younger kids, consider Messenger Kids instead. When using Messenger Kids, children can only connected with parent-approved contacts. Messages don't disappear, and can't be hidden. Parents and other approved adults (grandparents for example) can video chat and message with kids through their existing Messenger app.

Messenger Kids doesn't require a Facebook account. You create a Messenger Kids account for your child using your own Facebook account, and then authenticate their device using your login. This doesn't create a Facebook account for your child, and doesn't give your child access to your Facebook account.

Parents initiate all contact requests on behalf of their children from the parental controls panel within Facebook. For two children to chat, both of their parents must approve the connection.

Unlike regular Messenger, Messenger Kids is also free from advertising.

Instagram

Instagram's privacy controls are fairly simple; it comes down to the choice of a public or private account. If you're using a public account, anyone can see your entire profile and all of your pictures. If you've got a private account, other users can see your name and your profile, but not your photos unless they send you a "follow" request and you approve them.

To make your account private, fire up the Instagram app on your phone and do the following:

• Tap your profile picture in the bottom right hand corner
• Tap the three dot icon in the top right hand corner
• Scroll down until you find Private Account
• Toggle Private Account On

If you don't want a private account, you can have some say over who comments on your posts. To do so: 

• Tap your profile picture in the bottom right hand corner
• Tap the three dot icon in the top right hand corner
• Scroll down until you find Comments

Here you can choose whether to allow comments from Everyone, People you follow and your followers, People you follow, or just Your followers.

This pane also gives you options for blocking comments from specific users, hiding offensive comments, and manual filtering out comments based on specific phrases.

Snapchat

Snapchat's ephemeral nature means there's arguably less privacy settings to be concerned about, but a recent update added a feature called "Snap Map" that shows others where you were when you last opened Snapchat. Fortunately, this is easy to turn off. 

• Tap your profile icon on Snapchat's main screen
• Tap the cog in the top right hand corner
• Scroll down to Who Can

We recommend the following settings:

• Contact Me: My Friends
• View My Story: My Friends
• See My Location: Only Me
• Show me in Quick Add: No

Twitter

Twitter can be a vile garbage fire of a platform with long running harassment problems it has repeatedly failed to address. This makes understanding its privacy settings all the more important.  

In the app, you can adjust your privacy settings by following these steps:

• Tap your profile picture in the top left hand corner of the app
• Tap settings and privacy 

Here you can Protect your Tweets. This means your tweets will only show to people who follow you. If this is selected, you will need to approve each new follower. 

You can also adjust settings for Direct Messages. Turn recieve messages from anyone off if you don't want users who don't follow you sliding into your inbox. 

If you scroll down to Discoverability and contacts you can turn off settings like Let others find you buy your email and let others find you by your phone. Keep these off if you want to make it harder for people to find your account. 

Alex Choros

Managing Editor + Group Telco Editor | X | Instagram | Threads | LinkedIn

Alex Choros is the Managing Editor of WhistleOut Australia and an award-winning journalist. He's been writing about consumer technology for over a decade and is an expert on the Australian telco sector, to the point where he knows far too many phone and internet plans by heart. In addition to leading the WhistleOut editorial team, Alex is responsible for ruining the office Sonos with his troubled taste in music.

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