Our social media agony aunt looks at protecting children – and also your professional reputation – online
Dear Cybersorter,
My 10-year-old son is currently a bit obsessed with unsolved mysteries such as UFOs, the Yeti, etc. We got him a kid-friendly book on the subject, not too scary.
However, he pulled a few terms from it, did a search online and found himself on a conspiracy theory message board.
Here, he read a post by someone ranting on about finding and killing children. He didn’t mention it at the time, but wasn’t himself for a couple of days.
When I pushed him on it, he broke down and told me about the site. While it wasn’t porn, it featured some pretty warped views and genuinely scared him.
I have always relied on education and trust when it comes to internet content, and wouldn’t like to only allow him access to a version of the internet that is stripped-down.
That said, he has pretty much stopped using the internet since this happened, so I would consider filtering software if he was happy with it too.
– E O’N
Dear E O’N,
It’s great you have encouraged your son’s interests by giving him free access to the widest and most accessible database to ever grace the earth.
The fact that he seems shy of the internet after such a nasty shock is a strong sign you should step in and manage his access.
Any content that you suspect is illegal should be reported to the gardaí. Check out hotline.ie – an anonymous facility for reporting. They also have advice and links for filtering software and other safety sites.
Setting a few basic filters will allow your son to use the internet without either of you worrying about what he will turn up.
Dear Cybersorter,
I want to connect to some business people on LinkedIn to try and boost my job prospects.
I have sent out lots of requests citing the contact as a “friend” because I haven’t done business with them. That’s the point.
I want to do business with them but first I have to contact them. Is there a better way to do this?
– SR
Dear SR,
Despite LinkedIn’s tagline, “Relationships matter”, they don’t – at least not to people who don’t have any relationship with you already. It’s frustrating for those who wish to make new contacts but not those who don’t wish to be automatically opened up to every Tom, Dick and SR begging for a job.
Sorry.
At least send a polite introduction note, rather than the automatically generated “SR has indicated that you are a friend. I would like to add you to my professional network.” Those two sentences suggest you are lazy, you haven’t checked anything out thoroughly and you have just called the person a friend while trying to join their professional network, quite possibly denoting mild schizophrenia.
It’s not a great idea to send out requests willy nilly as you are more likely to irritate than ingratiate.
What works best is contacting people directly, by phone or email or better still, in person (that’s not a free pass to walk up and down their street all night until they either come out or call the police)
