Social networks are a great tool to stay connected with your friends and family, but like every other type of mass media, they can be dangerous if used by malevolent individuals. Being the most popular social network on the planet, Facebook is leading the efforts to make children safer online. As a part of that ongoing endeavor, the Menlo Park-based company just introduced a new Parents Portal. Antigone Davis, Head of Global Safety at Facebook explained that the goal of his division is to help parents and their children stay up to date with online safety practices, which is why the company decided to launch this new portal.
As Davis put it, keeping users and their information safe is the key component of everything Facebook does. With that in mind, the new Parents Portal provides a plethora of information and tips written to help parents and their children improve their online experience. In addition to written information, Facebook’s new website also features step-by-step video tutorials available in more than 55 languages, so parents can choose in which way they’ll experience this knowledge base. Apart from that, the Parents Portal also offers a broad range of information for contacting online safety organizations worldwide.
So, simply speaking, Facebook’s new Parents Portal is an information resource for parents who aren’t particularly tech-savvy and are unsure how they should handle the fact that their children are on Facebook or are trying to figure out whether to allow their children access to the said social network in the first place. This new addition to Facebook’s portfolio is a part of the company’s Safety Hub which also includes a general-purpose Safety Center and a Bullying Prevention Hub. The portal itself is divided into three sections titled “Get To Know Facebook,” “Parenting Tips,” and “Expert Advice.” While the first two categories are relatively self-explanatory, the latter is a list of online safety organizations and their contact information. All of the listed safety groups actually even helped shape the contents of Facebook’s latest portal. So, while not a revolutionary tool by any means, the Facebook Parents Portal is still a reliable resource library which many parents of minors are bound to find useful.