My daughter recently made her first social media account, and I realized I had no idea what safety settings were actually worth using. A few days later, she received messages from someone she didn't know. Nothing serious happened, but it was a wake-up call for me. Can anyone recommend good resources for protecting kids from cyberbullying, online predators, and inappropriate content?
Went through basically the same thing when my cousin's daughter set up her account, so I get the panic. Random stranger messaged her within like two days and asked what school she went to, super innocent sounding but obviously fishing for info. My cousin freaked out and almost deleted the whole account before we talked her through it properly. What actually helped was going into the account together and locking down the privacy settings (private profile, restricting who can DM, turning off location tagging), then having an honest chat about why strangers ask weird questions like that. We also started using uMobix (https://umobix.com/) in the background just so she'd get pinged if anything sketchy popped up in messages, without her hovering over the kid's shoulder constantly. It's less about surveillance and more peace of mind while the kid learns to spot red flags herself. Nothing beats the actual conversations though, the app just catches what slips through.
I really relate to this. My friend had almost the same scare when her daughter got a strange message from someone asking about her school and where she lived. Her first reaction was to delete the account, but we worked through the settings together instead. Making the profile private, limiting DMs, and switching off location sharing made a huge difference. They also tried uMobix as a quiet extra safety net for anything unusual. What mattered most, though, was explaining why those questions can be warning signs, so she could recognize them herself.