Parents may not get it. Actually, I didn’t get “it” until I was forced to evaluate child-directed websites as a part of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) compliance, as newly required by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). 

Starting July 1, 2013, the FTC requires that sites and applications directed primarily to children, effectively allow parents to review where their child’s information is shared, and delete that internet footprint, or record of sharing.  This sharing of child information through ad networks, cookies, clear gifs, beacons, etc. is what one can consider your child’s “Internet Posse”.  They are a Posse as they are not there just for the initial sharing of internet activity, but in behavioral advertising networks; they can follow your child’s internet activities outside of the child website that they visited.

We are extremely excited to announce our first annual Parenting Blog of the Year winners. We listened to our readers recommendations and scoured the web for the 25 best mommy/daddy bloggers and then we left it up to you to vote and decide who wins from there! Readers voted like crazy from mid-June to the first week of July, and the top 5 winners went home with some great prizes including gift cards, free uKnowKids accounts, press opportunities, and more!

In the current digital age, many families have tween and teenage children who spend significant periods of time on social media websites and mobile devices. While these outlets can be asset to children's social lives, they can also do more harm than good. Many parents are weary of enforcing heavy social media and cell phone monitoring because of the endless arguments that will result. However, doing nothing and letting tweens and teens have complete freedom is not the answer either. How do you find a balance? Consider creating an open environment for communication and compromise in which you and your children can discuss healthy limits and rules. The following tips will help you with this process.

• When can a child join Facebook? The minimum age for creating a Facebook account is 13. However, there is no way for Facebook to enforce this policy as people can lie about their birthdays when they create accounts. As a parent, it can be tough to stand up against the growing pressure that "everyone" at school has a Facebook account, even in 4th or 5th grade. If your child is adamant about joining Facebook before age 13, have a discussion with him or her about why Facebook creates this minimum age and why you believe that it is important. Your child may still be upset about not getting an account, but in time he or she will appreciate your honesty.

The world wide web can be a big, scary place for your kids.The most efficient way to monitor your child's online activity is through a parental intelligence system that will monitor and analyze their actions. Scams come a dime a dozen, but it's worse when they specifically target your children. You need to know what to watch out for.  Here are the 10 most common Internet scams your child might fall for:
  
1. Knockoffs

Kids love clothes, especially teenagers. They want to be trendy and have all the latest designer styles when they know they can't afford it. So scammers create ads for all these "discount" online stores

This article was originally published on Digital Journal by Marvin Dumon. It can be accessed here. 

Cyberbullying can be more pervasive than traditional forms of bullying. Bullying at school as well as pranks can be more easily detected by teachers, administrators and fellow students.

A recent bulletin on cyberbullying and sexting published by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) advises law enforcement agencies across the U.S. that “the growth of cell phones and Internet usage among teens has altered youth social and conduct norms.”

The FBI cyberbullying report adds that “cyberbullying is one of the most significant new issues law enforcement has to address. Anecdotal and research-based accounts from police across the nation depicted a lack of clear guidance, training, and support. This is unfortunate because bullying is an age-old problem with recent forms often relying on technological devices and mediums.”

The internet has afforded children, some as young as preschool-aged, new and exciting ways to learn and to discover. It has also shown itself to be a platform through which online predators can slink undetected. The internet can be as dangerous as it is useful. For this reason, many parents enforce strict guidelines in terms of search time, websites and appropriate chat rooms.

This may not be the best approach. Restriction ultimately leads to rebellion. The objective here is to make internet safety training as interactive as possible, so that your child understands the risks associated with irresponsible behavior, has fun while learning, and makes the decision to reinforce those caveats in themselves while surfing with limited supervision.

Here are some fun ways to teach your children internet safety.

Games

By Sameer Hinduja and Justin W. Patchin

A crossword puzzle to be distributed to youth to promote discussion about cyberbullying.

A look at the clues, download the PDF here:

ACROSS

5. Acronym for the company that provides an Internet connection to individuals or companies.

6. Short for “World Wide Web” or pages linked together via the Internet

7. A wireless handheld device which allows for telephone communications.

10. Interactive web journal or diary, the contents of which are posted online and then viewable by some or all individuals.

11. An electronic device that stores and processes information and also facilitates electronic communication when connected to a network. 

On YouTube, videos of fluffy kittens or a singing mouse can quickly take a child down a “rabbit hole” and a journey to explicit videos.  According to one study, children on YouTube can typically get to inappropriate material such as nudity and violence in only three clicks. 

Take Rastamouse, a popular children’s cartoon on YouTube, for example. While watching this child-friendly material, the viewer can scroll through “Suggested” videos on the right side of the webpage. These “Suggestions” range from more cutesy cartoons to music videos with vulgar language to other inappropriate things.

Most adolescents and teens can’t imagine a world without Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites. As a parent, you may feel a responsibility to monitor your child’s social media use, and that makes sense. 

However, it’s important to make a distinction between necessary monitoring, which you’re doing for your child’s safety, and simply impinging on their social life and interactions with their friends. Facebook for kids is a form of interaction – one that most children want limited to their peers as much as possible. 

Here are 10 things that parents do on social media that might be embarrasing to their children: 

1. Posting Too Much

The internet is a truly wonderful thing. Never in history has so much information been so readily available. All it takes is a query and a few pecks on a keyboard for a person to immerse themselves in books, videos, periodicals, tutorials and countless other forms of media. However, as information amasses in databases all across the web, so does material that is unsuitable for younger audiences.

A new study in the Journal of Adolescent Health reports that teenagers who experience cyberbullying are more likely to develop negative responses such as depression and addictive behaviors.

The study's lead author, Dr. Manuel Gamez-Guadix of the University of Deusto in Spain, said that it is important to understand how cyberbullying impacts adolescent health.  While many adolescents both become cyberbullying victims and also bully others themselves, those that experience cyberbullying attacks for six months or longer are more likely to experience problems such as depression or substance abuse.

Those of us who are in their thirties remember a time when the things that parents did and the things that kids did were totally separate.  Parents went to work, had dinner parties with their friends, or went to movies or the theatre.  Teens, on the other hand, hung out with friends at school, gossiped in the cafeteria, and went to raucous parties at each other’s places.  The only time that parents were able to monitor teens was when they were at home in the evenings.  Before the advent of cell phones, you couldn’t get in touch with anyone at a moment’s notice.

Now, the two worlds overlap all the time on Facebook, where parents as well as children have accounts.  It’s easy to keep an eye on teens by logging in and taking a look at their latest posts, especially if the teen has agreed to be “friends” with his/her parents on Facebook.  Although teens may not always want their parents to know what they’re up to, who they’re communicating with, and what exactly they’re saying, you still find many teens posting nasty comments about others when they know that their parents are sure to see them.

Do these kids just not realize that Facebook is not like a private diary?  Or are they actually hoping to be noticed by engaging in behaviors that psychologists call a “cry for help”?  A good example of a “cry for help” in real life, as opposed to the digital arena, is when a person swallows a large number of sleeping pills, but not enough to kill him/her, just enough to get him/her some attention from loved ones.  The person doesn’t know what to do to make things better and hopes to shock others into paying attention.  There are also more everyday “cries for help,” sometimes referred to as “acting out.”  These take the form of throwing tantrums, locking the door to one’s room, or constantly engaging in risky behaviors to get the attention of parents.

No one wants to see their child being bullied. As bullying becomes more and more prevalent in the media, it has become obvious that bullying no longer just takes on the "Steal your lunch money" tactics of past generations. 

Cyberbullying is, in many ways, more intense than in-person bullying. Cyberbullying acutely targets a child's insecurities, making the emotional and psychological bruises far more permanent than the traditional punch or swirly. Cyberbullying allows bullies to feel anonymous, freeing them up to say harsher, more pervasive things than they might say in person. Cyberbullies generally face fewer consequences- unlike in a traditional school context, there are no adults monitoring for signs of abuse on a regular basis, so unless a parent, guardian, or school official is tipped off to the problem, it can go unpunished for a substantial amount of time. 

Twitter, which was founded in 2006, began as a text messaging service for people to connect within a small group.  A tweet, a message consisting of up to 140 characters, is what Twitter is made up of. Photos and videos can be included within your message.

The use of hashtags on Twitter is a way people link to a certain topic. Twitter publishes trending topics on the site throughout the day. 

The information you put out there is done so in real-time. The information is shared instantly.

Parental monitoring tools enabling parents to see what kids are doing online are going to be needed more than ever. An extensive study is out that says children look up things they shouldn't when the parents aren't around. This study through McAfee is a real eye-opener and goes into the deep layers of what makes parental control so difficult: Lack of time and knowledge.

Parents Not Keeping Up with What Kids Know

In the above study, it's found that many teens take advantage of parents not knowing how easy it is to guess passwords those parents set for parental controls. As well, the general lack of tech savvy by busy parents means kids are taking advantage of the situation. The most concerning is that the parents in the study thought it was impossible for their kids to learn the parental control passwords.

Digital parenting seems to be changing into more of a shared family experience, according to a new study cited by CNN from Northwestern University. And in that same study, it's found that parents aren't that concerned about the dangers of the digital world with their kids. Whether that's a sign of parents becoming too busy to deal with reality or not, it's an interesting examination of where America is headed in families dealing with an increasingly digital world.

Digital Media isn't Always a Babysitter

The most positive news in the above study is that many parents use regular toys, books or other play activities to keep their kids occupied above using a smartphone, tablet or other digital media device. It's an encouraging sign that the digital world won't replace traditional items in developing the minds of the new generation. At the same time, when that digital media is used, it's becoming a collective family activity--that is, when the parents are actually around.

It's a common question when kids start hitting their tween years. They begin to grow larger friend groups, become more entwined with their social circles, and form new connections. They're beginning to develop some independence from mom and dad, and with that, the question always comes up: "Mom, Dad, can I make a facebook?"

Of course, this begs the question from moms and dads everywhere: How do I prevent cyberbullying? After all, today's news is rife of stories of children using the internet to harass one another, sometimes to the point where young lives are lost. It's a reasonable fear, and a difficult question to answer. The answer, of course, is to monitor your children's facebook page to ensure that communications are appropriate. Of course, there is always a balance between monitoring your children and giving them some level of independence.

The act of monitoring your child's social media accounts is not an unusual one, either. According to the LA times, almost two thirds of American parents monitor their children on facebook, and with good reason. In an era where the internet gives anonymity to almost anyone, kids are liable to make poor decisions. The worry isn't just that your child will be bullied, either. There is just as big a concern that your child will become the bully.