Last week, a student at Lone Hill Middle School in San Dimas received several threats from an Instagram account that stated “we plan to kill her.” Seven individuals claimed that they wanted to kill the student and said, “This week we plan on fighting” and “This week we kill.” I posted a link to the news story below.

These types of criminal threats on Instagram are not new. When a child is interacting on a social network like Instagram, they are vulnerable to these kinds of attacks. For parents of children who are using Instagram, or who are thinking about allowing their children to use social media, I have several important suggestions to keep your child safe:

Step 1 – Social Media (Yes or No?)

Knowing when to allow a child to enter the social media culture can sometimes be a difficult decision. All studies and polls agree that social media (Kik, Instagram, Facebook, etc.) are teenagers’ preferred method of connecting with friends, even when they are sitting in the same room together. 

If your child is under the age of thirteen, most social media sites’ end user agreements have made it easy for parents on the fence of allowing their ten year-old on Instagram. Children under thirteen are not allowed to have social media accounts. Sure a parent could still set up their account, but they run the risk of sending the wrong message to their children: Rules don’t matter. If the website’s rules don’t matter, why should our family’s rules for the Internet matter?

If a parent thinks their child is mature enough to have a social media account, they must address the issue of cyberbullying and digital reputation. The permanency and unforgiving nature of social media is a difficult concept for children to understand. Children ...