It’s hard to ignore the fact how integral social media has become for all of us – especially teens. They use it 24x7 and cannot imagine their lives without it. They use social media to stay connected with their friends, family members, and others and to get their daily dose of updates about topics they’re most interested in.

The brains behind social media know how to keep their users entertained. Multiple social networking sites have been launched including but not limited to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. Teens spend most of their time using these sites on their laptops. When they give up using their laptops, they switch to their other digital devices and continue using the same social media apps. Now that these social networking apps have kept teens so engrossed, it’s high time parents also teach their teens some tips or etiquettes of using it in a right way.

Behave in a Civil Manner

Teens need to understand that they need to behave politely with others when they’re using social media. Online threats especially cyberbullying is widespread among the people on social media and it is one of its biggest drawbacks. Mostly teens behave in a superior way and love to downsize others, especially the ones who are naïve and vulnerable, by making their fun and insulting them. Teens get affected with such superior attitude and tend to suffer from a lot of mental and physical problems. Belittling others can cause some serious problems to the victims. Parents need to make sure that their teens do not insult or make fun of any other person on social media. You need to teach them to behave in a civil manner, be polite and respectful towards another person.

Do Not Interact with Strangers

It’s quite normal for teens to chat with complete strangers on the social media without knowing who they really are and what they are up to. And when they do interact with such random strangers, they end up getting themselves in a lot of trouble. Social media is full of pedophiles who are in search of vulnerable teens so that they can easily brainwash them and ask them for a meeting. The best way to keep your teens away from a dangerous situation is to tell them about the intentions of such people. Teens need to be warned off such people who lurk online in search of prey so that they do not become their next victim.

Turn on Privacy Settings

No matter how volatile social media is, the good thing about it is that you can always set privacy settings on your accounts. Teens who want to stay private on social media and maintain low profiles, they can turn on privacy settings on their accounts to keep sheltered from the unknown people. Adding people whom they’re not aware of can be a bad idea. Therefore, they should not add or follow people who are not linked to them. If teens are unable to set the privacy settings then parents can help them out.