<p>I have just discovered that my 14 yr old accepted a friendship invitation on facebook from a stranger in the next county. He has friended 6 of her friends and he is encouraging them to text him as well. I have seen his private messages to my daughter and they are subtly inappropriate. His profile picture is that of a clean cut looking 18 to 20 yr old.</p>
<p>We will be discussing this with her tonight. She knows that she should never “talk to strangers”. We think that we will be talking to her about the dangers and we will be taking away the priviledge of using the internet and cell phone /texting for some period of time.</p>
<p>I would appreciate hearing other parents thoughts on how we should handle this and should we take this further ie talk to the other girls parents and possibly contacting police (don’t know if they can do anything).</p>
<p>I have told my kids that they can’t accept a friend request from anybody they haven’t met in real life (with the exception of future college roommates). No friends of friends.</p>
<p>After blocking this guy, make yourself a Facebook account with the profile pic of a clean cut, 18yr old.
Try adding your daughter, if she accepts …
If she accepts and DOESN’T tell you …</p>
<p>…“I have seen his private messages to my daughter and they are subtly inappropriate. His profile picture is that of a clean cut looking 18 to 20 yr old.”</p>
<p>Your D is underage - he is not. I would be sending a text back to him telling him you are the parent and if you ever text this number again you would be contacting the police.</p>
<p>Good for you for being on top of this. This isn’t all bad, it’s a learning experience for your daughter. If she learned something from this then the next time a stranger tries to friend her she’ll be more wary.</p>
<p>The “stranger” could be a middle school peer of your daughter and her six friends who is simply posing as someone else (avatar), and they could all be in on the joke, so tread carefully when you confront your daughter.</p>
<p>wow this is discouraging. I thought this stuff happened more on myspace. I guess these creeps are now stalking facebook even with the more secure privacy settings.</p>
<p>The parents of the other 6 friends definitely need to be notified too.</p>
<p>I had a picture of a young blonde woman, possibly under aged up on my profile as a result of an “in” joke. Besides that I have no other information up. I started getting quite a few random man asking to be my friend. </p>
<p>I have since changed my profile picture to a heavy set man in a wife-beater with a tattoo of “pig” in Chinese on his arm. No more requests from random man.</p>
<p>This is not an isolated incident. I think we as parents need to make sure that kids understand a strict protocol for not accepting friend requests from people that they don’t know. I have gotten quite a few myself. I check to make sure if the person is not someone from my distant past or that I should otherwise know, and if I can’t connect the dots I hit the “ignore” button. I have received several friend requests from 20 something young ladies whose interests include “men.” What are they looking for? I don’t know, I ignore the friend requests.</p>
<p>I don’t know yet if this person actually knows any of my D’s friends I just know that he clearly made comments to my D that creeped me out. I appreciate many of your suggestions -to tell other parents and to send him a message telling him to stop. I do feel she has to lose some time with her phone and computer. Not sure how much though. I would like to hear any other thoughts. She is generally not a good communicator and will get very defensive then shut down so I want to present this calmly and clearly so that it an effective learning experience. My H suggested we print out some news articles on similar stories that turned bad. I don’t know if that is neccessary…</p>
<p>^That would get through to me if my parents did it. Kinda takes away the thought of “This stuff doesn’t happen here”…especially if the story is local.</p>
<p>I’d suggest maybe a week or two away from the phone/computer. I realize it’s not very much, but first of all you’re obviously nipping it in the bud. Secondly, phone & computer is how teens communicate. Cutting her off (except for school, although I’m assuming she’s on summer break) from her friends for a minor lapse in judgment seems harsh to me.</p>
<p>Better to discuss it so she understands herself the risks, and might consult you in future if she has doubts. I don’t see any reason at all for a punishment.</p>
<p>Sorghum- I feel that she knows that she should never friend a stranger on facebook. We certainly discussed when she started her page several months ago and up until now she seemed to follow those guidelines. She did something that she knows is wrong. It seems that some consequence is warranted.</p>
<p>Tell her to change her security settings. The only people who can find me in searches are friends of my friends and when they click on my profile the only thing they see is a link to add me as a friend. No picture, no information, not even a list of my friends. These have been my settings since I got my facebook several years ago and I have never had random people request me as a friend (well, I did have one- but he was a future co-worker- so it was okay).</p>
<p>Discuss it with your D and try to find out her thought process in communicating with this person. You need to find out why she wouldn’t have ignored him on her own. </p>
<p>If you had already discussed the rules with her before regarding communicating with strangers like this and she broke the rule then there should be consequences. At a minimum I’d pull the plug on the social networking sites for a month or so. I don’t think a week is enough. If you hadn’t set rules before about this though, you probably should skip this consequence. None of these kids ‘needs’ to be on these sites.</p>
<p>Maybe find a copy of one or two of those sad Dr. Phil shows illustrating real world examples of kids (usually in the 14 y/o range) who ended up eventually meeting with the pervs and getting raped/killed in the process. There are also articles with examples of this.</p>
<p>Make sure her security settings are appropriate but if she actually wants to communicate with people like this, as it appears she might if she ever responded to him, that won’t solve the issue - you need to have a frank discussion with her about the realities of the dangers and it needs to ‘click’ in her head.</p>
<p>It also reminds me of the Mother who created the myspace page and pretended to be a teenaged boy and eventually the young girl committed suicide after the messages turned ugly.</p>