Better be safe than sorry

You love social networking and can't seem to get enough of it. You are one of those who wake up and sleep with facebook.

You want your friends to know what's happening in your life and update your status message every five minutes. Well, this means you are one of the many addicted to social networking. Your life revolves around facebooking. However, your parents are miffed with your addiction and are not sure who you are meeting or chatting with or what kind of information you are sharing on your facebook. They are a little concerned about you not getting out of your room and not having a real conversation with the people outside.

Don't call them backward or conservative for their actions are justified. This is an age where you can make friends, meet and even get married to a person at a click of a mouse. But it always helps to take precautions to ensure you don't land yourself in a difficult situation or worse put your parents in one!

Tips to avoid getting into trouble:
- Do not simply add friends to up the number of friends on your list.

- Do a background check of any person who sends you a friend request. Check for mutual friends and if possible write to them and know who the person really is because everybody has a tendency to randomly add friends.

- Do not flaunt pictures of your house.

- Keep your status messages as general as possible.

- Specific messages would give hints to people to misuse it.

- If you are taking off on a vacation or a restaurant, do not mention it. You can flaunt your pictures later showing what a good time you had. But giving information beforehand is a strict no-no.

- Keep your parents informed about your whereabouts and the kind of friends who have on the social networking sites.

- However much the person appeals to you, do not meet the person soon after you befriend them.
- If a person abuses you publicly over the site and is creating hell for you, then use the unfriend or block person option on the site.

Be wary of strangers and people with wrong motives. It's okay to showoff your flourishing social status on networking sites, but it's equally important not to land yourself in trouble.