Helping a Teen Take the Facebook Plunge

Is your teen on Facebook? After months of hemming and hawing and general freaked-outedness, my youngest finally set up an account. We had a friend of the family who was forcibly Facebooked by a couple of girls who set up a fake account in his name a while back, and I think the trouble and upset involved in getting that page removed has increased the fear factor for this more legitimate attempt at using the service. Still, the effort is underway, the friends list is slowly growing, the newsfeed is filling out, and I expect to be doing a lot of close supervision to make sure everybody who's friended behaves. If you're contemplating this leap with your teen, you can read some of the reasons why I think it's a good idea for teens with special needs, and how I'll be keeping my personal teen safe. Do you have online safety tips of your own? Share them on the Readers Respond page.