How To Keep Your Kid From Being A Twit on Twitter

Parents: Do you know what your teenager tweeted last night? If not, you might want to take a look.

A recent survey by investment firm Piper Jaffray suggests Twitter is now more popular among teens than Facebook. One key reason: They are much less likely to find their parents or other alleged authority figures on the service.

This often leads kids to believe they can tweet with wild abandon. They would, of course, be mistaken.

Since the microblog launched in 2007 untold numbers of teens have been expelled, fired, or arrested for something they said on Twitter.

Tweeting the wrong thing could land your child the same fate. Here’s how to make sure that doesn’t happen.

Tweaking Twitter

Your child is smart enough not to tweet something that would land them in trouble, right? Before you answer, think back on all the stupid things you did or said as a teenager.

…think about it…

Yeah, that’s what I thought. So it’s better to take a few proactive steps now before any real damage occurs.

The first step: Carefully go over the Twitter Rules with your child, and discuss what is and isn’t appropriate to post on the microblog. Also take a gander at Twitter’s Safety tips for teens. Then pray they don’t completely ignore you.

The best way to keep kids from being twits on Twitter is to make sure their accounts are “protected.” Anyone who wants to view tweets sent from a protected account must first be approved by the account holder, and any 140-character bursts of teen angst won’t be visible to search engines (and thus school administrators, college admissions officers, cops…).

Protecting a Twitter account is remarkably easy. Starting from the account’s homepage, click the drop-down arrow next to the gear icon and select Settings. On the next screen, select “Security and privacy” from the list of categories on the left. On the following screen put a checkmark in the box that says “Protect my tweets.” Click “Save changes,” enter the account password, and you’re done.

Anyone who was following your child before the change is made will still see their tweets as they had in the past; everyone else will see something like this:

Tweet emotions

But let’s be honest. The odds of your teen voluntarily making his or her account invisible to the world at large are pretty slim. The main reason kids create a Twitter account in the first place is to connect with people who don’t know what a dork they are in gym class. So they will probably opt to remain public (or switch their settings back after you’ve left the room).

Even if their account is unprotected, there are a few things they can do to limit their exposure.

Use a fake name. Unlike Facebook or Google+, Twitter does not require people to use their legal names when they sign up for the service. Personally, I encourage my teens to use pseudonyms online so their youthful mistakes don’t cling to them as adults. If they’ve already created an account using their legal name, you can go into the Settings/Account menu to change their user name to something less obvious.

Depersonalize their profile. When you set up an account, Twitter asks for your hometown, Web site, photo, and a 160-character bio. Persuade your teen to skip the first two fields, use an avatar or animal as an image, and minimize the amount of personal information in the description. This will make it harder for others to match your child’s tweets to his or her actual identity.

Lose the location. You really don’t want strangers to be able to track your child’s whereabouts. Fortunately, Twitter turns location tracking off by default. If your teen has turned it on, you can go to the same Settings/Security menu to de-select it, as well as delete any previously stored locations.

Nix email searches. On Twitter, any random person can find your teen by searching for their email address, or mobile phone number. If you’d like your teen to be harder to find, go to the Settings/Security menu and uncheck the boxes next to “Let others find me by email address” and “Let others find me by phone number.”

Lock it down. The last thing you want is your teenager’s account to be hijacked. If someone guesses your teen’s password, they could use their Twitter account to send spam and/or nasty tweets, thoroughly bollixing your innocent child’s reputation. Worse, they might also be able to access any other account that uses his or her Twitter credentials as a log in.

The first step is to choose a unique, reasonably hard-to-guess password (for example, “p@$$w0rd” is better than “password,” but “Q8y64#x$” is better still) . The second, more extreme option is to go to Settings/Security and choose “Login verification.” This will send either a six-digit code to your teen’s mobile phone, or an alert to their mobile Twitter app, every time someone tries to log into their account. They must enter the code or clear the alert before they can gain access.

I call this the extreme option because it is a hassle to do this each time you log in. On the other hand, anyone who’s had their Twitter account hacked – and their life turned inside out as a result – would consider it a small price to pay.

Use it or lose it. Finally, if your kids use Twitter, you should use Twitter – even if you don’t quite understand why – and follow them. It’s the best way to see what they’re sharing with the world; you might even find you enjoy it. (I would probably waste most of each day on Twitter if I didn’t have a mortgage to pay.)

Of course, adults have been known to say and do stupid things on Twitter too – and to pay the price for it. So all those things I just said apply equally to you, too. Remember: If your teen screws up on Twitter, they at least have the excuse of youth and inexperience. If you do it – well, not so much.

And your child will never let you forget it.