Over the last month, a 20-year-old Instagram star allegedly took her life on the yacht she was working on, an entrepreneur left a note on the social-media network before he jumped off a building to his death and Anam Tanoli, a model from Pakistan, also died, after she posted a don’t-bully video on Instagram. Which makes Instagram’s release of A Parent’s Guide (wellbeing.instagram.com/parents) that much more relevant.
“It’s important for caregivers — parents, teachers — to understand what the draw is,” says Tara Bedi, who heads Public Policy Programs and Community Outreach at Instagram India.It could be very different from your own. So while you may see it as a way of say, documenting travels, your child may see it as something quite different. She says the company felt the need to release the document so parents could have an informed discussion with their teens on understanding the risks .
As any psychologist will tell us, conversations with our children are important, across a range of subjects, but also on social media. Not sure how to open a conversation? Ask your teen to show you a few features and then get the chat happening with Instagram’s list of suggested questions, that include: “What do you wish I knew about Instagram?”; “Have you ever felt uncomfortable about something you saw or an experience you had online?” And “If you have multiple Instagram accounts, what do you share in each account?” Here, the basics all parents should know about the platform, especially when it comes to safety.
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2. Your child can start with a private account (Settings – Private Account), so only befriend those he wants to.
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4. He can control who sees his stories (Settings – Story Controls).
5. Stories are very popular and are essentially disappearing content. But this can be screen-shot, remaining on phones in someone’s device and leaving a digital imprint.
6. Other disappearing content is in the messaging service, where taking a photo and sending it can be done with ‘One view’ or ‘Replay’.
7. Direct messaging is common, and if you have an agreement with your child to ask to check his phone once in a while with his permission, do consider looking at Instagram too.
8. Accounts can be blocked (Go to the profile, click on the bottom at the top right and Block).
9. He can add a two-factor authentication, which is a code sent to the phone or a third-party app like Google Authenticator, each time he logs in from another device.
10. He can have five different accounts from a device, so know that he may have multiple accounts.
11. Spell out what is appropriate and what is not. So in terms of his own behaviour online, tell him that it is against the rules to impersonate anyone, even as a joke, or post anyone’s private information, like a phone number without checking with the person first.
12. Ask him to avoid geotagging, but if he’s very particular, to postpone it until he’s left the area.
13. IGTV is YouTube-style content that kids may be watching, according to their interests and who they follow.
14. Content on Instagram is ‘tailored’ to each person, meaning your child can be tracked for his online and offline activity on Facebook Company Products.