In case you missed it, the New York City Department of Education released some guidelines for social media use. Here is an article from Rebecca Levey, co-founder of KidzVuz.com about why parents shouldn't be so quick to embrace these guidelines. It was originally published on the Huffington Post.

In my Facebook feed today there are a lot of moms sharing the link to the new NYC Department of Education Guidelines for Social Media Use. The local NYC media are also excitedly promoting the new social media guide put out this week. At first glance it sounds great that an administration is stepping in to help kids navigate social media, provide tips and guidance and empower kids to make smarter choices online -- or so you'd think.

This article was originally posted on BlogHer and written by WomenLoveTech.

I get sick in the stomach when I read about teenagers taking their own lives after extensive online bullying. Nearly 80% of kids under 10 use social media. I urge you to take cyberbullying seriously. The Internet is a great place to learn, to be entertained, to share and communicate, but not a place for bullying.

Up to 35 percent of 8 to 11 year olds have their own mobile phone, rising to 94 per cent of 16 to 17 year olds. Children and young people are increasingly gaining access to the internet via their mobiles, yet only a very small percentage have discussed cybersafety with their parents.

I hope these 21 powerful tips to prevent kids cyberbullying will guide you and will help your kids. Please share this list with them.

1. Do not respond to any cyberbullying message, block the person and tell a trusted person.

2. When you are upset, walk away from your computer or your smartphone.

3. Do not write anything against another person, one day you will regret it but it will be too late.

4. Do not share with anyone (except parents) your passwords, your BFF is not an exception.

My niece has a smartphone.

Up until a year ago, I had a flip phone. And the screen didn’t even work. Once I finally upgraded, my niece had to sit me down and explain all the features of my new phone. Sound familiar to you?

If you’re a parent who still fires up the PC, or thinks they’re tech-savvy because you use a laptop, or even if you navigate well through your apps and smartphone features, beware: Your kids learn faster than you do, especially when it comes to managing their digital footprint on the Internet.

Check out this article written by Dan Tynan, and featured on Yahoo! Tech.

Despite its many flaws, Facebook is a pretty cool way to reconnect and stay in touch with long lost friends and relations. It’s also a relatively safe environment for teens to learn the ropes of digital citizenship – safer, at least, than many of the alternatives.

But parents often have the wrong idea about Facebook and social networks in general. In fact, they have two wrong ideas.

Here is the story of one mother that took to the internet to publicly shame her daughther to teach her a lesson about....publicly shaming. One mother found out her daughter had been cyberbullying peers on the Internet and the following was her response. 

This morning, a young girl is getting a taste of the abuse she was apparently serving up to her classmates, thanks to her innovative mother.

Yesterday, reddit user AngryCOMMguy posted a photo (pictured) of a downtrodden young girl holding up a yellow sign. The young girl - who identifies herself as Hailey - is a cyberbully. At least, according to her mother. Apparently, Hailey's mother discovered that her daughter was abusing fellow students (at least we assume it was fellow students and not just some random people), via the Internet. As a result, Hailey's mom decided the best course of action was to have her daughter sell her beloved iPod and give the proceeds to Beat Bullying, a charity that works to combat bullying in all its forms.

Taking a break from this story, I think it's safe to say that this is a time-tested parental move: if your kid acts like a jerk, you take something away from them. Make them feel the sting of their malfeasance.

If the talk about cell phones hasn’t come up, it will.  There comes a point where you can't say no anymore.  Making that determination depends on whether you feel your child is ready to handle this important step and maturity has a ton to do with it.  Here are some questions to help you out. 

What reason do you have to buy your child a cell phone?  Great reasons include sports practice, living in a two family household, dropping landline for cell phones, emergency purposes and your child being old enough to stay at home until you come back from work.  If the reason is just as important as those listed a cell phone may be in the cards.  Giving your child a cell phone for no reason is not an option. 

Would you give your child an iPhone for Christmas? What if it came with a strcit contract?  We posted a blog from the Huffington Post earlier this morning about a mom that did just that, and here are her reflections and what she learned one year later. 

Check out this blog post that we found on the Huffington Post a year ago about a mother who gave her son an iPhone with a strict contract for Christmas. And check back later today because we will be posting the follow up from author Janell Burley Hoffman, entitled "What I Know One Year After Giving my Teenager an iPhone Contract".

uKnowKids has realeased another SlideShare! View below to get a great list of the top 10 resolutions that every digital family should make in 2014. Don't worry, these are easy and attainable resolutions that will make this year the safest year yet for you and your children online and on the mobile phone.  If you haven't made any resolutions (or even if you have and need some you can definitely keep) this SlideShare is for you!

Deciding whether your child is ready for Instagram has to be determined on how much knowledge you give them in navigating Instagram's security. When someone posts pictures on Instagram, security features are there, but they can be misleading in how many ways a predator can work around them. Take a look at some of the methods predators can use to look in on your child's photos and how you may have to take individual action to make sure this doesn't happen.

The Problem with Using Fake Names

Your kids have to be educated on how the mind of a predator works. While that might intimidate your child discussing such things, it's a bitter reality they have to learn. One of those is in how predators can so easily create fake accounts and names to gain access to specific accounts.

How Teens Compare Themselves to Others on Facebook

Most teens spend a lot of time glued to their computers and cell phones.  Rather than interacting with people directly, they tend to do it through the medium of Facebook.  Sure, Facebook can help you keep in touch with people you might not ordinarily meet all the time e.g., people who moved away from the neighborhood or went away to college.  It’s nice to be able to know what these people are doing and to keep in touch in some way or the other.

However, teens also tend to use Facebook just to communicate with school friends and see what other people are doing.  Many of them read glowing depictions of the lives of their fellow classmates—how much fun they had at a certain party or what a great shopping haul someone brought home.  And this makes them feel worse about themselves.

#

Such an innocuous symbol, right? On it's own, it doesn't mean much. But for parents in the know, what's attached at the end of that hashtag symbol can tell you much about what your child is interested in.  

Digital parenting continues to become more complicated all the time as technology become integrated into everyone's lives. Despite some parents finding it a challenge, are they really using technology as a babysitter for their kids? Live Science recently analyzed this idea and found that not all parents are relying on smartphones and the Internet to keep their kids occupied. In some cases, parents use that technology as a way toward reward or punishment for their kids.That Live Science piece also brought up an important point: Digital parenting has become more challenging due to a lack of social rules when it comes to using the technology. Is it possible that a universal set of rules can be set in households so kids use digital technology in responsible ways?

In many cases, kids go on social media on their own while parents are at work and do things under their own accord. If a set of social rules are set early, it's possible those habits could be readjusted.

Your child has been begging for a Facebook page and you have finally decided you are ready to let them have one.  The thought of them having their own account can be overwhelming and it can be difficult to know where to start.  Everyone wants their children to be safe on the internet and in order to get them started its important you tread lightly. Below are simple steps you can take as part of digital parenting in order to prepare your child for their first Facebook page.

Keep it only family – It is important that in the beginning children keep their page with only family and close friends on their 'friends' list. This will lower the risk of cyberbullying.

Teach them about cyberbullying – Let them know that cyberbullying is not ok and to let you know if anyone is harassing them on the internet. This will also let them know that it is not ok to do it to others.

Twitter is a fast paced, information loaded social networking site that many find to be too much to handle. At the same time, there are others who have adopted the social network as part of their overall usage of the Internet and now say that they are hooked on it. So, you have to ask yourself as part of digital parenting, "Is my child ready for Twitter?". 

Maturity

The maturity level of your child in particular is a large part of the answer about if they are ready for Twitter. Luckily, with Twitter there are not some of the pitfalls that other sites might have which are inappropriate for children. Rather, with Twitter the concern is more about how much time they will spend on it and what kind of things they will say to the public. 

Watch What You Say!

Perhaps the most important part of the Twitter conversation that you have with your children is the part about making sure that they understand that what they say on Twitter is broadcast to the Twitter using world. This can be both very cool, and quite scary at the same time. There is a point at which some of the information that is going out may not be things that should be said at all. Thus, the child needs to have this part understood. 

Cyberbullying continues to become the individual terrorism of the online world without any end in sight. With the U.K.'s National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children recently citing some sobering statistics, you can also see how much of a worldwide problem cyberbullying has become. In the NSPCC figures, cyberbullies now target one out of every five children online.

Think your 7th grader isn't sexting? Might be time to think again.

A new study was published online today by the American Academy of Pediatrics about the sexting habits of at-risk seventh graders.

Here are some of the most shocking statistics:

• 22 percent of at-risk seventh graders participated in sexting.

• 17 percent sending texts only.

• 5 percent sending texts and photos.

• Higher perceptions of approval for sexual behavior from parents, peers and the media, higher intentions to engage in sexual behavior, lower emotional awareness, and lower emotional self-efficacy.

In 2011, a fifteen-year-old girl was released from the hospital following a failed suicide attempt. However, when she got out of the hospital, the girls who had been bullying her by using a text bombing website to send her multiple text messages, picked up right where they left off.

Her second suicide attempt was successful.

An important part of parental intelligence is understanding what text bombing is, and how kids are using it to cyberbully and harass each other. With new apps being developed every day, it doesn't matter that the Google App store has banned two of the apps responsible for allowing kids to demonstrate this type of behavior - SMSBomber and SMSBarrage. 

These apps are a new form of cyberbullying and allow kids to download them and then send multiple text messages to the same person. By using the app, a kid can send thousands of different text messages to the same person during the course of the day. Even as an adult, imagine receiving a thousand different text messages from the same place during one day. Perhaps the messages said something like, "Your wife is cheating on you", "I saw her with someone else today", or "Your marriage is over." Even if you feel relatively solid within your marriage, getting so many of those text messages all at once is sure to at least make you doubt the faithfulness of your wife. 

For kids, the feeling is amplified even more.

This article originally ran on Sue Scheff's Blog, Navigating the Internet in Safety.  We appreciate the kind words, Sue!

I was tired of reading the articles about teens exiting Facebook.  I am sure the studies are done efficiently, but I still know that teens will be teens.

Recently I wrote an article for Huffington Post Parents, “Are Teens Really Leaving Facebook?”

As I said, I doubt it — it is more likely they are creating alias accounts to escape the prying eyes of adults, specifically their parents.  Maybe they don’t have anything to hide, but they simply want to express themselves without having to explain themselves.