Protecting Your Child in Facebook–Using Lists

After I created my kids’ accounts, the first thing I did was to create Lists for them. Facebook Lists allow you to group your friends and set different permissions for each group. For instance, your child might let his or her best friends and relatives see pictures, but not allow school acquaintances that he or she doesn’t know that well to see those photos. 

I always create at least two lists for my kids: 

BFF–Best friends and relatives (like Mom and Dad) go in this list. These are people I and my child trust and/or whose parents I know so that I can contact them if there is any problem. 

Other Friends–This list contains other friends, such as schoolmates that Friend my child on Facebook, but who aren’t close friends in real life. 

You may want to create more layers. Kids have a tendency to look at their friend’s Facebook friends, and then friend many of those people. They can easily friend someone who they know only by name and have never even met. An Acquaintances List could be useful to capture these people. 

How to Create a List

Creating a List in Facebook is easy. Before you create a list, first add a least one Facebook friend (like yourself) to your child’s account.  Then, use this procedure.

1. Click Home to see your child’s feed.
2. In the menu bar, on the right-side, click Account, and then select Edit Friends. 
3. In the left-hand menu, under Lists, click Friends, at the top of the list.
4. You’ll see a list of all your child’s friends and, at the top, a Create New List button.
5. Click Create New List.
6. In the Enter a Name box, type a name for your list.
7. Click Create List to create the list. Or, if your child has friends already, just select the ones you want to include in the list by clicking on their avatars or typing their names in the Search box. When you’ve selected all of the people to add to the list, click Create List.

Now, whenever your child wants to see his or her lists, just click Friends on the left side of the screen. The lists you created appear. Clicking on a list on the left side will display just the status updates from the friends in that list.

Specifying Privacy Settings

Once you’ve created Lists for your child, you can use them to set his or her privacy settings.

1. In the menu bar at the top of the screen, under Account on the right side, click Privacy Settings.
2. Click Profile Information. You’ll see a screen like this:

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In most cases, I’ve set my children’s privacy settings so that only their friends (the people they have accepted as Friends on Facebook) can view their profile information. The exceptions are: 

• Photos and videos of me People on Facebook can “tag” people in photos, so that the person’s name appears when you hover over their face, identifying the person. Since I am trying to make my child less accessible to strangers, I set this so that only her closest circle of friends can link back to her from the tag in the photo. Note that you can’t control tagging that other people do of your child in photos. So you may want to directly contact the other parents and ask them to restrict access to photo albums with your child in them.
• Photo albums  For photo albums, you set access to the albums individually. I’ve set any albums that have pictures of my child or her friends so that only her most trusted circle (her BFF’s) can see them. This way, even if her friends are tagged in the photos, only her close friends can see those tags. For more information on specifying Photo and Video privacy settings, see my post Protecting Your Child in Facebook–Photos.
• Posts by Friends  Controls the ability of others to see posts my child’s friends have made on her wall. I set the privacy to Friends of Friends.  Let’s say my child is called Grace. Grace has a friend named Jill who is allowed to post on Grace’s wall. If Jill posts on Grace’s wall, Jill’s friends can see what Jill said, as well as Grace’s friends. If you want to be extra-cautious, set this to Only Friends or customize it to restrict viewing to only certain Lists.

Restricting Access to a Specific List

For any setting, to restrict access to a specific List of friends, follow these steps: 

1. Click the button next to the setting, the Everyone button, and then select Customize.
2. You’ll see a dialog like the one below. In the These people drop-down, select Specific People.
3. In the Enter a Name or List box, type the name of the list. You can type more than one List or a List plus the names of specific people outside the List, and other combinations.
   

Here are my child’s final profile privacy settings: 

 

Restricting What Your Child’s Friends Can Share

You’ll also want to control what your child’s friends can share about your child. Your children’s friends can give permission for various applications and websites to access information about their friends–including your child. That includes giving permission for applications to use their friend’s photos and status updates. If you’ve gone to all the trouble to restrict access to your child’s photos, the last thing you want is for your child’s friends to bypass your protections via applications. 

1. In the menu bar at the top of the screen, under Account on the right side, click Privacy Settings.
2. Click Applications and Websites.
3. From the list, select What your friends can share about you. You’ll see a screen like this:
   
    
4. The defaults are quite liberal. For my kids, I unchecked everything but Online presence, Website, My links, and About me. Make your selections, and then click Save Changes.
5. Click the Applications and Website button to go back to the previous page. Then, click Instant Personalization.
6. Instant personalization allows other websites (Facebook partners) to personalize a page based on your child’s information. That means the website is being passed information about your child. Just uncheck the Allow select partners to instantly personalize their features with my public information when I first arrive on their websites box to turn this off. Click Confirm in the dialog box that appears.

Monitor Facebook, Too

Keep in mind that Facebook security is permeable. However, if you’ve followed the directions in this article and in my post Protecting Your Child on Facebook–Creating the Account, your child’s account is now ready for use. Of course, that doesn’t mean your child is ready to use Facebook. You’ll want to educate him or her about Lists, how to add friends to them, how to post to only a certain list of friends, how to protect their photos, and more. You’ll also need to regularly monitor him or her. 

Unfortunately, you’ll also need to monitor Facebook itself. Facebook is constantly changing its features and security settings–mostly erring on the side of revealing more about its users. And with its most recent changes, Facebook isn’t just on Facebook anymore. So you’ll need to understand and help your child understand the safety issues involved with using Facebook’s new social plugins on external website. 

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