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Tom’s Guide
Tom’s Guide
Technology
Amber Bouman

5 steps to safer social media in 2026: The settings you should enable right now

Woman outside using phone.

Social media offers a lot — from Facebook to LinkedIn and Instagram to TikTok — there's a reason to have the app of your choice (or all the apps) set up so that you can connect with friends, family, coworkers or even your followers. But you don't need me to tell you there are plenty of drawbacks to social media, and security and privacy risks are at the top of that list.

It might seem intimidating to try and control and handle the security settings for all of these apps. Each one offers different things, has different settings and permissions and has a different interface. However, if you know what you want to limit, curtail and protect, it's not that difficult.

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