Growth of Social Networking
Social Networking sites are a huge favourite with children, allowing them to stay in touch with friends over chat, meet new people with similar interests, and share photos and videos.
Used appropriately, social networks are a great place for young people to demonstrate their creativity. As a parent or guardian, there are plenty of things that you can do to ensure your children’s experience is both safe and fun.
What are some of the popular Social Networking sites?
Facebook is an online social media platform that has over 2 billion users across the globe. It was initially for university students but soon expanded out and since 2006, anyone over the age of 13 is able to join the platform. It is available on all devices from your desktop and laptop computer to smartphones and tablets. Users can add photos and videos, update their status, interact with others and catch up with the latest news. Despite requiring users to be over 13, there are no age verification measures and children can easily create an account. It’s therefore important that parents familiarise themselves with the main features of the platform to ensure their young ones remain safe if and when they use it.
Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms in the world. Users can upload and edit photos and videos which they can share with their followers via their feed or through the ‘Stories’ feature. It’s widely used by celebrities and is famous for its ‘influencer culture’, with many companies paying the most popular accounts to help promote and sell their products and services.
Snapchat is a photo sharing app for mobile phones and tablets. The app allows users to share images for a limited number of seconds, chat with users before messages disappear, and share images with their friends list through a ‘story’.
YouTube is an online platform – owned by Google – where anyone can upload and watch video content. All different types of information, advice and entertainment are uploaded, and billions of people tune in to watch, rate and comment on it.
Twitter is a social networking site where users can post ‘tweets’ or short messages, photos and videos publicly. They can also share ‘tweets’ written by others to their followers. Twitter is popular with young people, as it allows them to interact with celebrities, stay up to date with news, trends and current social relevance.
WhatsApp is one of the most popular messaging apps in the world, with more than 1.5 billion people in more than 180 countries using it to send and receive text, photos, videos and documents, as well as make voice and video calls through an Internet or Wi-Fi connection. The free app offers end-to-end encryption, which means that messages can only be read by the sender and the recipient in one-to-one chats, or all members if it is a group chat. Not even WhatsApp can read them.
TikTok is a video-sharing social media app available on iOS and Android which lets users create, share, and view user created videos in a similar manner to Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. Its main draw, however, is that users can record and upload bite-sized looping videos of themselves lip-syncing and dancing to popular music or soundbites, often for comedic effect, which can then be further enhanced with filters, emojis and stickers. TikTok has been designed with the young user in mind and has a very addictive appeal.
