Parents need to know that teens must be diligent about setting privacy controls on Facebook. Every time Facebook updates its features, users must check settings to confirm what information they're sharing and what they're keeping private. "Frictionless sharing" apps -- which allow users to share without having to take action -- bring additional privacy concerns. The Facebook Timeline shows every activity going back to a user's first post. It's like a permanent record, but the good news is that you can use it to delete posts you really don't want there anymore or change your privacy setting for the post to be viewable only by yourself.
Privacy shortcuts on the upper right hand corner of the page allow you to remove personal information like your gender or birthday, and you can also block search engines from showing a direct link to your timeline. To completely remove previous posts from searches, you'll need to review your "Activity Log" to see a list of all your Facebook activity and to review or edit the privacy setting for each item. After you've made privacy updates, you can double-check your changes by clicking on "View As," which will show you what your timeline looks like to a specific friend or to the public.
Facebook's most recent round of changes includes the "Graph Search," a super-charged search tool that mines Facebook's wealth of user data. From the search bar on the top left of the page, you can explore general info like "nearby restaurants" and "pages about news" or dig for more personal tidbits such as "music my friends like" and "people who like dogs and live in San Francisco." With such easy access to user data, it's important to recheck your privacy settings. For each section of your Timeline (About, Likes, Music, Groups, etc.), click the pencil icon in the top right of the section box to review privacy settings and modify who can see (and search for) the info.
