Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg may not have invented social networking, but he certainly dominates it. Facebook is by far the most popular social network for adults, teens, and tweens. In fact, it's such an integral part of the Internet that a lot of kids simply don't know how they would live without it.

Five or ten years ago, a lot of kids used to spend time “surfing the Internet,” looking for sites to occupy their time and attention. Now it's much more common for kids to log onto Facebook and spend hours surfing the site, exploring their friend's walls for hours on end.

A 2010 survey by Retrevo found that almost half of parents are Facebook friends with their children, a subject that most parents and children have strong feelings about one way or the other. Many parents will use parental controls or parental monitoring for Facebook for kids.

Some parents make two-way “friending” an absolute requirement for their social-networking kids to keep their Facebook accounts. Parents at the other end of the spectrum have declined their kids' friend requests, believing that parents and children should never be Facebook friends at all.

Are you Facebook friends with your kids?

Every parent knows that teen sexting is potentially really, really bad news. Sexting can spread around the school in minutes and humiliate the subject, or worse they can find their way online and become the common property of every pedophile with a broadband connection. But a recent research study also suggests that kids involved in sexting are twice as likely to experience psychological distress and even attempt suicide.

The Education Development Center in Newton, Massachusetts analyzed the results from a group of 23,000 high school students in the Boston area who were surveyed in 2010. The schools were situated in predominately upper-middle class white suburbs, so further research needs to be done on different demographics of teens.

Every few months, a new study is released in the United States or the U.K. giving new statistics and information regarding cyberbullying – the act of minors who threaten or harass each other (sometimes with serious consequences) using technology. But what might larger cyberbullying statistics across the globe, not just from one country, look like?

In a January 2012 survey for Reuters News, global research company Ipsos polled a total of 8,600 adults from 24 different countries to get a better feel for cyberbullying across the globe. The countries surveyed were Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Poland, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Turkey and the United States of America.

As all parents know, cyberbullying is a widespread problem that most kids today will unfortunately run into at some point in their lives. Many people brush it off as “kids will be kids,” but for some tween and teen victims the bullying has been the source of anxiety, depression, and other emotional and behavioral problems. Some have even taken their own lives in response to unrelenting cyberbullying.

Facebook is one popular social media network that is unfortunately the platform for a lot of cyberbullying that goes on. Facebook has included bullying FAQ for victims and parents of victims on its website, but has been criticized for not doing more.

An MTV poll shows that kids are both more likely to use vulgarity and slurs online and less likely to be offended when someone else does it. The online survey asked 1,355 people ages 14-24 about the language they and others use when texting or social networking, and found some surprising results. Much of this language is closely associated with cyberbullying, sexting, and other hot teenage issues.

Slurs targeting women, racial minorities, and homosexuals are becoming commonplace online. Kids also admit that they are becoming blasé about reading words like “slut,” “fag,” “retard,” and even the N-word in cyberspace.

Those of you who have shopped online, use online banking, or have used Facebook may have see a padlock icon appear in your address bar, and may have noticed the address bar has turned green. This happens when your browser is using a secure or safe connection (HTTPS) to communicate with whatever site you are on. Whats the difference? It all has to do with your internet safety settings.

HTTP stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol and its used for a majority of websites. Its safe and secure for your day to day browsing like surfing the web, reading blogs, checking your on your favorite sports team or watching videos. The extra "S" in HTTPS stands for "secure" and websites that use HTTPS want to ensure that the information you enter on their site remains private.

What are the conditions of giving your child a cell phone? Whatever is acceptable for your child, it's important to clearly communicate those rules in a parent/child cell phone contract.

As adults, we have to sign a “terms of use” agreement for pretty much everything we do. It lets us know what's expected of us and what happens if we break our word. Kids who receive a cell phone from their parents need exactly the same thing.

Teen and kids safety alert: Alexis Summers, age 17, was killed in a fatal car crash as she texted at the wheel while driving early in November. What makes her death particularly poignant is the fact that she died only 8 hours after her home state of Pennsylvania passed a bill to make texting while driving illegal.

On the way home from visiting her boyfriend, Alexis's car left the road, hit a tree, spun around, and collided with the tree a second time. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

Your kids probably know, understand, and have an opinion about Twitter. Do you? Its another alternative to Facebook for kids...

Twitter is a social networking site based on the premise that you can get all the information you need to know in short bursts of 140 characters (or less) called tweets.

Legislators often demand that schools take more responsibility for students who engage in cyberbullying, sexting, or posting fight videos on the Internet – even when it doesn't happen in school or during school hours. One major question many parents are asking themselves is: can a school possibly police their students' online lives? And even if they can, should they?

Actually, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that schools can discipline their students for activities that occur on their own time away from campus, as long as the activities are “disruptive” or “dangerous” to the school or student body. So if a student's online conduct poses a threat to the school or other students (a subjective judgement), they can be punished.

Parents have watched as sexting tweens and teens across the country have been charged with creating or distributing child pornography. States are struggling to address the problematic behavior of teen sexting, but many legislators feel that applying child pornography laws is misguided.

For instance, New Jersey recently passed a bill specifically targeting the issue of minors who send nude or racy photos of themselves to each other consensually. Minors age 12 through 17 who share photos with each other will not be subject to child pornography laws – although they will have to undergo an education program designed to teach about the dangers of sexting. If a minor forwards a racy photo of someone else without their consent, they could still be punished under current child pornography statutes.

How old was your child when they got their first cell phone? 14? 12? 8? If your pre-teen is begging you for a phone of their own and telling you that “all their friends” have one – they're probably not lying. The average age of kids who receive their first cell phone is falling like a brick. So how much does kids safety come into play?

A Pew Internet Forum survey in 2009 asked parents of cell phone owners the question, “How old was your child when s/he got her/his first phone?” The average age was 11-12. Of kids who owned cell phones, 46% got them in the 11-12 year age bracket.

Sexting used to mean sending nude or racy pictures to someone else's cell phone, but today's teens are upping the stakes with a new kind of sexting. Sexting is evolving from pictures to video – and video sexting can be twice as dangerous and twice as risky.

Like most things teens might do to fill their time, online gaming has its pros and cons. Gaming improves hand-eye coordination, encourages problem solving, and can foster teamwork and social skills (in multi-player games.) On the other hand, too much of a good thing can be, well, bad and can affect teen kids safety. Several studies have followed the effects of gaming in teens, including the latest released by the American Psychiatric Association revealing a correlation between too little sleep and Internet gaming.

Did you know that people can tell where you were when you took a particular photo? Sound like a kids safety risk to you? We're not just talking about identifying landmarks in the background, we're talking about geotagging.

Geotagging happens when you snap a picture on any device with a GPS chip: it embeds detailed information about where, when, and how the photo was taken, including latitude and longitude coordinates that generally pinpoint the location to within 15 feet.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerburg told the public at an education summit in California last month that he wants to get rid of the requirement that Facebook users have to be at least 13 years of age. He says that Facebook for kids is an avenue for education that should not be denied children under 13.

Current legislation (the 1998 Children's Online Privacy Act, or COPPA) forbids sites like Facebook that collect information on its users to allow children under 13 to sign on. Of the COPPA legislation, Zuckerburg says, “That will be a fight we take on at some point.”

“Facebook depression” is a term that first started showing up around March of 2011 after studies linking depression and overuse of social networking sites were publicized. How real is Facebook depression, many parents wonder, and should we be worried? Are our kids safe? What about Facebook for kids?

Several groups report on the Facebook depression phenomenon, including the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP.) Follow-up studies have also replicated the findings: depressed teens are more likely to report excessive social networking use than their non-depressed peers.

Texting or for some, sexting is how most kids communicate – it's easy, it's fast, it's convenient, and teens always have their phones with them – but sometimes it can go too far. You've heard of cyberbullying, but have you heard of cyberstalking and text harassment?

Statistics from the U.S. Justice Department reported in 2006 that 23% of stalkers used texting and email to harass their targets. And the kicker is that with texting the victim has to pay for it, sometimes as much as 15 cents a text. Ask your teen if they or their friends have ever been in a relationship where their significant other constantly texted them, almost to the point of harassment. You might be surprised.

Earlier this week I wrote about the many constructive ways our kids can use social networking and facebook for kids. A recent survey conducted in the U.K. reveals that many adults don't feel quite as positive about social networking. Anyone who knows a teen with a MySpace status-checking addiction knows that social networking can be a perfect way to waste time. According to one survey in the United Kingdom, Facebook and Twitter ranked among the “worst innovations of the decade”, most likely for that very reason.

The first-ever Innovation Survey conducted by The Foundation asked 2,243 adult consumers to rank the top 3 and worst 3 innovations, according to their own personal opinions. Facebook was the #2 worst innovation of the decade (second only to reality TV,) while Twitter closely followed at #4.