HOUSTON – Some call it a perfect tool for pedophiles -- Facebook's new Graph Search. Anyone can use it to make contact with kids... kids they've never met.
On Monday night, we showed you just how easy it is to find your teenage children and their friends using Facebook's new Graph Search. Now we want to show you step by step how you can protect your children from that danger just by tweaking their Facebook pages, even if you know next to nothing about Facebook.
Facebook -- where teenagers tell it all. But with Facebook's new Graph Search tool, now complete strangers could locate and contact your child.
With help from Local 2 Social Media Producer Sara Patterson, we're going to show you how to bulletproof your child's Facebook page.
Step one: Because kids lie about age on Facebook, make sure your child's age is accurate. Click on the About tab under your child's picture. Scroll to basic information. Click edit and change your child's birth date to the correct date.
Next, it's time to change your child's privacy settings.. Start by clicking on the Settings cog wheel located at the top screen far right. Then scroll down to privacy settings, and go to "Who can see my stuff." Click edit and then click Friends. That's because you only want friends to see your child's stuff.
Now go to "Who can look you up," again click edit, and again click on "Friends."
Think of it this way -- Bulletproofing your child's Facebook page is like putting a lock on your front door.
One more thing to make this easy. Sit down with your teenagers at their computer and do this together. That way if you get stuck, your son or daughter can bail you out on these quick fixes; they understand Facebook a lot better than you.
And tell them straight out, this doesn't limit what they can put on Facebook, it just limits who can see it.