Best Social Media Safety Tips for Students

Last Updated on 11 months by Touhid

Social media can cause both positive and negative feelings and effects on students’ lives and society. There are many reasons why social media can be a dangerous playground and impact student’s life. Today, in this post, we’ll put some useful social media safety tips for students that can help protect them online.

What is Social Media?

Social media are interactive websites and applications that have been designed to allow people to create and sharing of information, and ideas, efficiently, and in real time.

The most popular social media platforms are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others. People are getting facilities by using social media platforms because it is one of the best ways to stay informed.

In addition, students have a profile on a social networking site, and they visit these sites every day from morning to night.

Social Media Safety Tips for Students

It is important to take care and talk with your students about how to use social media platforms safely. Here are some important social media safety tips for students.

Use Strong Password

The first social media safety tips for students is to use strong passwords instead of easy passwords. You should use a very strong password to protect your social media account and never use an easy password for your account.

Maybe you are using a very simple password to remember in your memory like as date of birth, mobile no, student_id, and 123456, which is one of the reasons for cyber-attacks.

So, create a strong password for your social media account and change it regularly (i.e., Between 30 and 180 days).

• The password length should be at least 10 characters long.
• The password must have uppercase letters (A – Z), lowercase letters (a – z), numbers (0 – 9), and special characters (@, #, $, %, ^, (,), &, *!).
• Example for strong password: $Mo&89neY%; is a strong password and standard password.

Finally, creating and using a strong password is one of the best social media security tips for students and others account also.

Learn More about How to create a strong password?

Use Different Password for Different Accounts

It is strongly recommended to use strong and unique passwords for multiple accounts. If you use the same password for multiple accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and if a hacker gets access to your one password then all other accounts will be vulnerable. So, it is better to use a unique password for multiple accounts.

For example:

• Facebook account –> Use a unique and different password.
• Twitter account –> Use a unique and different password.
• LinkedIn account –> Use a unique and different password.

Protect Your Password by Yourself

Nowadays, keeping your password safe is a basic requirement. To protect your password from unauthorized access to social media accounts you should do the following:

• To create a strong and unique password
• Change the password regularly.
• Don’t share it with others even your best friends and
• Place the password in a secret place.

Don’t Save your Password on Browser

It is a very bad practice that save a password on the web browser in a social media account. We don’t want to re-enter the password the next time log in because we want to save our time.

But if your computer or mobile device is ever lost or stolen then they will get complete access to your social media accounts.  Even, storing your passwords will make your accounts vulnerable to your roommates, family members, and visitors also.

Install Antivirus Software

Antivirus software is a program that helps to protect your computer against viruses, worms, Trojan horses, and other unwanted threats. It is a very important social media safety tip for students because it scans every file that comes through the internet or USB devices to your computer and helps to protect against damage to your system.

You can use one of the following anti-virus software on your computer and keep updated with the latest version.

• Norton
• Kaspersky
• Panda
• ESET
• Avast
• AVG

Up to Date Your Web Browser

Keeping your web browser up to date is another social media safety tips for both security and ensuring that web pages load properly. We know that out-of-date web browsers can have serious cyber security problems such as phishing, viruses, Trojans, spyware, adware, and other sorts of malware.

In addition, you should know that many popular websites, such as Gmail and Facebook no longer support old versions of web browsers.

Be Confirmed then Accept Friend Requests

When people want to be friends with you on social media sites, then first visit their profile page and if you don’t know them, so don’t accept their request. It could be a fake account to harass you.

Be Careful about Sharing a New Post

When you want to share a new post on Facebook or other social media accounts, first think to yourself that the post has any negative impact on others. or how your post will be helpful to others? So, please submit an informative post, which will help your social media friends.

Keep Your Information in Private

Keeping your information private is another important social media safety tips for high school students. Don’t give out your personal information such as phone number, email address, and personal contact information in your social media profile and posts.

So, keep your information private for safety purposes. Moreover, if you want to share your information with a friend, do it directly by phone or messaging.

Do not Click on the Suspicious Link

When you see a link in the social media post, which seems to be suspicious then don’t click on it. If you click on that link, then there is a chance to redirect you to a vulnerable website to hack your sensitive information by an attacker.

Basic knowledge of malware

Malware is a software program or code which is intended to extensive damage to data and systems or to gain unauthorized access to your computer system.

You have to gather knowledge about malware because it is delivered in the form of a link or file over an email account. On the social media website, there are a lot of links and if you have no idea about malware then you will click on that link and will be a victim of an attacker.

Learn more about Malware.

Conclusion

Finally, students should be very careful on social media platforms. We have discussed “social media safety tips for students” to protect them online. Hope the article will be helpful for students!