A whopping 82 percent of teens aged 16 or 17 have a cell phone. While these devices are great for facilitating communication between parents and teenagers, they also pose many risks. Talk to your teens about these common smart phone dangers and make a plan to avoid them.

A Distraction While Driving

Texting and driving is so dangerous that it's illegal in most states. You're 23 times more likely to crash when you're texting. Teens who text and drive spend an alarming 10 percent of their driving time outside their lane. Dialing, talking on the phone, and reaching for the device increase your chances of getting into an accident as well. Twenty-three percent of automobile collisions in 2011 involved a cell phone. The same year, accidents where there was a distracted

Read this piece from The Hays Daily News that brings up a great point that cyberbullying and sexting can affect males and females differently.

This is the seventh in a series about abuse and violence in adolescent dating and romantic relationships.

Q: What is the relationship between teen dating violence and abuse and technology?

Of the people interviewed (ages 14 to 24), 50 percent reported experiencing digital abuse. Among the teens, girls were more likely to have been targeted than boys at the rate of 53 percent to 42 percent, respectively. The respondents in the survey stated the most common types of digital abuse they experienced were spreading lies (online and in text messages), violation of trust and digital disrespect, mean messages online and in texts.

Students will head back to school over the next month, which means parents are finishing up all the last minute back-to-school shopping. You've already loaded up on #2 pencils, highlighters in every color of the rainbow, and those classic pink erasers. Now it's time to start thinking about electronics. Students today go to school with much more than a new backpack and smartphone. This year, load them up with a powerful set of digital tools to enhance their educational experience and some digital parenting tools for yourself as well. 

Headphones

Last year, headphones went seriously high-tech with the introduction of the Beats by Dre headphones. These stylish, state of the art headphones were on the wish list of every teenager last Christmas. The headphones continue to prove popular but some other headphone options might work well for students as well. 

Many classrooms use online teaching tools now that require students to wear headsets with USB plugins and microphones for recording. These common headsets get worn by everyone in the school. To protect your students from germs or lice, provide them with their own headset with USB plugin and microphone.

The Today Show did a segment on sexting last week, and they couldn't have been more wrong. 

Read the full story below from our friends at Business Insider. 

Last Thursday, "The Today Show" featured a segment on the new and shocking discovery that teens use their phones to sext each other, even though they use their phones to do literally everything else. We first saw the segment on Slate.

"Today Show" host Matt Lauer tries to figure it all out: "So a teenage boy will be sitting in a classroom, there will be a teenage girl he's never even talked to, and he will pick up the phone and text her 'I wanna hook up or I wanna do this to you, are you willing?'" he asks in the segment.

Ask.fm has been a hot topic among many outlets the past few weeks because of its terrible tendency to enable cyberbullies. Apparently, the company has listened to protesters and victims calling for action. The online social networking site has responded to the cyberbullying controversy by implementing new safety measures. 

Cyberbullying is not a new concept. Parents around the world understand the importance of monitoring their child's use of the internet, but the constant evolution of social media sites creates an abundance of obstacles for even the most diligent parent. Teenagers have the tendency to stay one step ahead of adults when it comes to finding new avenues of peer interaction on the internet. One dangerous social networking site that many parents may not be aware of is Ask.fm. 

Parents hear a lot of conflicting things about Facebook these days.  First of all, it looks like children have stopped communicating in person and started communicating more over the internet.  There is a certain safety in this kind of communication.  If you say something the other person doesn’t like, at least you don’t have to deal with the consequences right away.  It gives you more courage to express what you feel.  However, people do say hurtful things over the internet as well, and cyberbullying is as real a problem as in-person bullying.  If you're wondering, "Is my child ready for Facebook?" then keep the following factors in mind:

1. Age: Is your child over the age of 13?  If not, you will be in direct violation of Facebook’s policy.  You’ll be lying about your child’s age and setting a bad example for him/her.  So take your time and wait until your child is the official age.  You’ll have less to worry about, and s/he will also be more mature by the time s/he starts social networking.

The following piece from NBC's Helen A.S.Popkin is a great article on Ask.fm and the recent media storm around it. 

Popular with kids, and — until recently — obscure to many adults, Ask.fm is a Latvia-based social networking site where members interact by inviting others to ask anonymous questions.

Though the site has more than 65 million members who interact in more than 30 languages, it wasn’t until Monday that Ask.fm made headlines in the United States. That’s when kidnapping victim Hannah Anderson, barely 48 hours after her rescue, logged on using the name “Hannahbanana722." Her identity later confirmed by her grandparents, Anderson openly answered personal questions about her ordeal, posted by anonymous strangers. She also posted several smiling selfies — cellphone self-portraits — as well.   

Though innovative media platforms bring new ways for kids to express themselves and share their lives with their friends, they also bring exposure, attract bad influences, and introduce brand new ways to have unwise youthful decisions preserved on the Internet. Parents should keep a particular eye out for their tween or teen's participation on Vine, a video service purchased by Twitter in 2012.

For the uninitiated, Vine is an app allows users to create and share six-second, silent looping video clips on Vine or to Twitter or Facebook. According to Wired magazine, it's one of the top apps in the iOS download ratings, even after the introduction of video for Instagram. It's popular because of its informal, unfiltered, uncensored culture, and is uniquely positioned in the marketplace because of its popularity among young people. As tech journalist Mat Honan writes:

Cyberbullying has now been deemed a cultural problem by some media outlets, and it might have to be blamed on the contentious media culture that people see. Since federal laws on cyberbullying are still non-existent, one has to wonder how existing state laws on cyberbullying are working. As of now, 34 states have cyberbullying laws, even though we still hear so much about kids being harrassed online in every state.

But what new states are joining the fray? And will state laws make any real difference without federal action?

Oklahoma the Latest to Pass a New Law

Recently, the anti-bullying law Bill 1661 was signed into law in Oklahoma by the state's governor, Gov. Mary Fallin. While it addresses the problem of bullying in general, it specifically hones in on cyberbullying so schools can use law enforcement to intervene. The bill allows schools to keep internal records of

There are so many ways for teens to communicate today - email, texting, facebook and now Tinder. Tinder is a new dating app that creates a collection of Facebook photos that it shows to other interested parties in the area. One of the best parts of Tinder is the local feature which means all the people who are interested in you are in your area.

Teens love Tinder for a number of reasons. First, is the instant gratification that it gives. How the apps works: a picture of someone pops up and the user has the option of clicking on a green button and if they don't like what they see they hit an X. The average teen is thrilled to find out who thinks they are hot. Tinder only gives the good news. If people see the pictures and hit the X the teen never knows about it. 

Keeping up to date with the evolution of social media can be a challenge for any parent, but familiarizing yourself with the latest trends is a vital part of digital parenting. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are the most popular social media outlets, but there are many less known apps that are gaining a large teen following. One app that is taking over social media is Snapchat. Snapchat, which is used largely by teens and young adults, allows its users to send pictures to their friends that self-destruct after they are viewed. Unfortunately, the promise of a picture disappearing is not entirely true. The person receiving the photo can choose to take a screenshot of it. Even though the sender is notified the screenshot was taken, once the recipient has acquired the photograph how they choose to use the image is out of the original senders hands.

With the allure of a picture vanishing once it is viewed, Snapchat has become an app that is widely used for taking photos of a sexual natures. While parents are aware of sexting by text message, they may not realize their teens have found a new way to send inappropriate images of themselves. Snapchat's advertising as a self-destructing photo app has created a false sense of security in teens and young adults. The reality that the receiver of the image can take a screenshot of the photo and use it any way they want without the senders consent is a consequence a teen may not fully comprehend.

uKnowKids was featured in Mashable in the article "Keep it Clean: 8 Tools to Block Porn and Sexting." uKnowKids can help parents prevent their children from sexting and the dangerous pitfalls that can come with it! Here is it, by Taylor Casti.

If Anthony Weiner has taught us anything, it's that sometimes naughty pics just aren't worth it.

Sexting and pornography can be a problem for parents with teens. For teenagers and preteens, sexting can have major consequences, the least of which being a bad reputation. Nude selfies are still considered child pornography and are against the law. Even if the photo never makes it into the wrong hands, one study shows that teens who engage in sexting are more likely to take bigger sexual risks (such as having sex) that could lead to sexually transmitted diseases or teen pregnancy.

Here is a very interesting and shocking article in Psychology Today by Elizabeth Meyer, Ph.D about sexting and suicide.  Even though it is from 2009, most of the article still rings true, and unfortunately not much has been done to help victims of sexting cases that got out of hand and the bullying/cyberbullying that almost always follows.

Parental involvement has been shown to have positive influences on a child’s academic and social development. As kids get older, they naturally want to gain independence and trust. When parents are controlling, kids may question if their parents trust them and parents might feel like they’re intruding. On the other hand, the job of a parent is to safe-guard in a reasonable and responsible way, leading both by example and by setting firm guidelines.

Set boundaries

When used in a responsible and safe manner, the Internet can be one of the most powerful research and educational tools at a child's disposal. It can expose him to a wealth of knowledge that would otherwise be difficult to obtain, help him experience other cultures and ways of life and encourage him to learn about the world around him. When used irresponsibly by children that have not been adequately taught about the potential dangers, however, the Internet can also be one of the most powerful tools at a predator's disposal. These ten tips can help you keep your kids safe without depriving them of the vaulable knowledga available.

The month of July brings you another eBook, and this one is for any parent whose child has asked to start their own, or any parent who wants to understand the basics and not-so-basics of blogging!

The internet and mobile devices are continually evolving. New applications and websites are developed each day and shared with the world. While many fade into obscurity or into their niche worlds, others truly take off and become more than just another app. While many of these trendier applications are meant for good, their impact and effects can be very detrimental and harmful. One of the newest applications available is known as Spillit, an application that has become as much about cyber-bullying as it has social connection. The following explains more about this new application and why parents, adults, and children should all be aware of its potential dangers.

What Is It?

Spillit is an application that has users create a login name and password to participate on the site. The ultimate goal of the page is to ask other users what they think about that individual. With a limited number of characters, other frequenters to a user’s page can answer the question. This is meant to help learn about each other and create a social connection via the page.

While there is undoubtedly a lot of potential for finding knowledge and quickly assembling research via the Internet, kids that use search engines and social networks for school and pleasure can end up facing significant dangers.