Because her daugher loved performing, Shelby felt she was being supportive by giving Rachel a camcorder for her 13th birthday. The days and weeks following her birthday Rachel recorded everything, from the family dog playing to her mom cooking and, of course, herself, singing and acting out her favorite movie scenes. Her home videos became so popular that her family from out of state asked to see them.
When Rachel asked her if she could open a YouTube account for video-sharing, Shelby was skeptical at first. However, she agreed after Rachel promised not to reveal personal details such as her real name, where she lived and went to school, and also that her videos didn't have footage that would accidentally release this information.
After a while, Shelby noticed Rachel had lost her enthusiasm for making videos. She checked in on Rachel's YouTube account to find that strangers were leaving hateful and inappropriate comments on the videos.
Shelby explained to Rachel that the bullies were wrong for posting the messages. She sat with Rachel to review her privacy settings and made sure that the settings allowed only her YouTube friends to view her videos. After some research on the website, she found a new feature called "safe mode" that filtered offensive content, both from a user's session and permanently on an account. She set safe mode for Rachel's account, as well as on all the browsers on the home computer, in order to filter search content even if someone browsed YouTube without logging in.
Shelby was thankful to be able to address the problem before it got out of hand, but she wished she had done more research beforehand. Now she's careful to monitor Rachel's online activities and talks with her about socializing online.
To learn more about talking with your children about YouTube, see the video-sharing article.
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