MURFREESBORO, Tenn. (WMOT) -- A specialist in the School of Computing and Formatics at Lipscomb University is encouraging parents to get involved now in their children’s virtual lives to avoid problems down the road.
Lipscomb’s Finn Breland says these days even very small children are setting up personal accounts on social media websites like Facebook and Instagram. He says it’s absolutely essential that parents educate themselves about these websites.
“Without understanding what Instagram is like, without having an account of their own, it’s very difficult to maintain – to keep some kind of supervisory role over whatever interactions they’re going to have.”
Breland says some parents monitor their child’s online interactions closely, while others are more relaxed. But he says at a minimum, parents must have a serious conversation with their children about cyber life.
“Discussing the open dangers about what happens when you post something that you may regret later, and that’s something for students to know so that 20 years down the road a moment of weakness doesn’t come back to bite them in their professional career.”
Breland says you should drill it into your children’s heads that they lose all control of a post once it’s uploaded and it never really goes away.