Article by Dave Brooks

Facebook monitoring is something that every parent, who is concerned about the safety of their child, should investigate.

Facebook is the largest social networking site on the Internet. It has surpassed the popularity and membership of MySpace. What started as a networking website for college students to talk about student issues and classes, turned into the website with millions of members worldwide. You have the young and the old on Facebook. Anyone can create a profile on Facebook and get in contact with their friends and meet new people.

However, for parents the vastness of Facebook can be a cause of concern. It’s on Facebook to where kids will discuss and share information that parents may want to be aware of – that’s where Facebook monitoring comes into play.

While social networking sites have improved their safety measures for teenagers on their websites, parents need to take extra steps in order to protect their kids from child predators, online bullying and even simple embarrassing photos or comments about a child.

So with this in mind, parents need a way to monitor their child’s Facebook page and this can be done with Facebook monitoring software.

There are many software programs that can aid in Facebook monitoring for families. When you’re looking for parental monitoring for Facebook, you should be looking for several key pieces of technology: Photo monitoring, activity monitoring, friend background checks and solid reporting.

Running background checks on all your kids’ friends is especially important because many online predators will pose as children. The right technology will identify this type of fraudulent activity and report it to you. A good service will also tell you of any other type of suspicious findings regarding your kids’ friends.

Using protective services like this will also allow for use of a photo monitoring. This allows the parent to view all photographs that their children have on their profiles and also any photo that is tagged with your child’s name.

Beyond photos and friend checking, you’ll want to keep an eye on activity across all the popular social network sites. This activity monitoring allows you to read all postings your child has made.

Reporting is a huge concern because all the monitoring in the world will do no good if the parent doesn’t know about it! Look for a service that will send out immediate notifications to parents whenever conversations of drugs, violence, suicide and sex come up, and if any adults or suspicious individuals try to become friends with your child.

About the Author

Dave Brooks is the author of Safety on The Internet, a free email mini-course and writes frequently about Facebook monitoring.

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