This guest post comes to us from Pierce Higgins, founder of AfterMath, a website that enables a child to earn his time online by answering educational challenges. 

It a great privilege to be asked to write a guest blog for uKnowKids.com, one of the world’s leading companies in the “Parental Intelligence” space. uKnowKids has a range of category-winning products for parents that cover areas such as social monitoring, mobile monitoring and location monitoring.

Today’s parents have become disconnected from the digital lives of their children and have become increasingly incapable of dealing with cyberbullying, sexting issues ,mortifying video clips on YouTube amongst many.

Cell phones are becoming more ubiquitous with teens and tweens texting their friends every chance they can get. While this isn’t generally an issue, and can even provide smiles and a fun way to communicate with peers, there is a concern with a type of texting called sexting.

Sexting is the sharing of nude or near nude pictures by cell phone texts. Sexting is different from sending suggestive text messages, which although also a subject of concern, is not the same as sending an actual photo of one’s self in the nude with possibly a suggestive text message accompanying it.

So how can you protect your child from, and teach your child about, the implications and consequences of sexting?

Dads and moms can’t be everywhere at once. While we would all like to be able to meet all of our work, family, and social obligations while still being able to keep both eyes squarely on our kids at all times, life just doesn’t work that way. Still we need to be conscientious parents and we’d like to know what’s going on with our kids for those hours a day that their heads are burrowed into their phones, tablets, laptops, and computers. Digital parenting is one of the newest trends sweeping the nation and this is something which has been borne out of both curiosity and necessity. 

What it is: Digital parenting gives parents the tools they need to monitor their kid’s virtual activities. It’s no secret that there are bad people out in the world. The virtual and literal anonymity of many corners of the online world have made it vital that your kids be kept an eye on.

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: 

With the advent of social media and the fact that kids are spending more time on the internet now more than ever, parents need to be extra sure to pay special attention to what their kids are getting into online. In the past, one of the biggest concerns you might have had as a parent dealt with the kind of kids that your child spends a lot of time with. Now, social media sites such as Facebook give kids an outlet that can reach quite literally the majority of the people that your child may know. This can be just fine if your children are trustworthy and responsible with what they share, but some children cross the line, whether it has something to do with sexting, online bullying, or making inappropriate comments.

Has it ever occured to you that your child's favorite sites and apps might have unseen dangers? When they say they have been on Instagram or Vine or Keek, do you understand the risks involved? While these sites have boomed in popularity in recent months, the shocking reality is that they are home to some of the most dangerous risks on the Internet. 

If your child becomes the victim of cyberbullying, will he or she have the tools to cope? Parents of cyberbullied kids can do a lot to help, but one important one is making sure that they have access to positive role models. One of these is Ghyslain Raza, more popularly known as “The Star Wars Kid”.

In 2003, Ghyslain Raza was an ordinary ninth grader in Quebec. He was trying out for a school Star Wars skit, recording himself stage fighting with a golf ball retriever for a light saber in his high school's TV studio. Without his knowledge, classmates found the video and posted it online, where it became one of the first viral videos on the Internet.

In this article from The Washington Post, Cecilia Kang investigates underage children, Instagram, and if the image-sharing giant is doing enough to make sure kids are safe from adult strangers. We agree that the safety of children online should be the number one priority from all of these social networks, but unfortunately that is not always the case. Here is an excerpt of the piece below: 

This is a guest blog post from Anne Collier that was originally published on The Christian Science Monitor. Anne is editor of NetFamilyNews.org and co-director of ConnectSafely.org, a Web-based interactive forum and information site for teens, parents, educators, and everybody interested in the impact of the social Web on youth and vice versa. She lives in Northern California and has two sons.

Pheed is the latest in social media and is positioned to replace Facebook and Instagram in the near future. Why? Because it offers so much more sharing options than Facebook, Youtube and Instagram combined and some of its features will make your online parenting harder. 

What is Pheed?

Pheed is a social media app that is available only on iPhones and online. Soon, it will also be available on Android phones, as well. If your child accesses Pheed using only their phone, any online parenting software that you use to track your child's social media usage will be useless. This could be a major draw for kids who have their own phones. 

Each user gets what is called a "channel" which is much like Facebook's wall. Users can post their information for everyone to see, or they can close their channel. If a user closes their channel so that only certain people can see it, they have the option of charging other users to view the channel. This can be a highly attractive feature for younger users who may let the wrong users see their channels all in the name of making a profit. 

Digital Parenting is controlling the parameters of digital life with children.  It is important for parents to learn how to play and teach their children to play it safely.  It is obvious our world and lives are going to continue to revolve around digital sources.  Wireless is infiltrating most every sector of the lives we lead.  Parents need to become familiar with how to protect their children.

Here are five important tips to keep children safe in the digital age:

Family Intelligence and Education

• Develop safe practices and rules for the family on mobile device usage.  Everyone in the family should subscribe and adopt the rules.  These can be as easy as: "Never use my phone to harm others", and "Remind all drivers to never text and drive".

We loved this post from Monica Vila over on Mashable so much that we thought we had to share it with our readers! Monica is co-founder of TheOnlineMom, an organization that provides technology education to families and helps moms connect with brands they can trust. Here is her take on keeping one step ahead of kids ina mobile world. 

Digital media is now a mundane part of our lives and our children's lives. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, are all part of a completely personalized social media experience. In the digital landscape however, if there is any certainty, it is change. With the proliferation of devices that include cameras in their architecture -- smartphones, tablets, even the upcoming Google Glass -- it was only a matter of time before social media evolved from the use of such archaic means of communication as text, to the immediate, more entertaining and more communicative format of personalized videos. Of course, Youtube first popularized videos, but for the most part it has not streamlined in a manner consistent with social media. Why take the time to say in a paragraph that takes five minutes to write, what you feel, when you can utilize the full nuance of human expression to say exactly what you feel exactly when you feel it? 

This is the concept behind Keek which aspires to be the twitter of video social media. Rather than a text message format such as Twitter or a picture-based message board like Facebook, Keek offers users the ability to record and post microvideos up to 36 seconds in length at any time and from anywhere that is internet connected.  Just as with other social media services, you can subscribe to other users, post video updates and even respond to other users either via text or via video responses otherwise known as “Keekbacks”.  Keek also offers hash tagging similar to Twitters format which the site calls “Klusters”. Just as with Twitter, Klusters allow Keekers to find Keeks and other Keekers which apply to their interests.

What Is Online Gaming?

The world of online gaming is a diverse one, with thousands of games available. Simple applications, such as Pathwords and Typing Maniac, are built into Facebook and mobile phones. More complex games include massive online multi-player role-playing games such as Second Life and Internet-based gambling websites. Many online games require a membership or credit card, but others are available for free.

 What Are the Dangers of Online Gaming?

Because the online gaming world is so diverse, the dangers vary from game to game. One of the most serious concerns is that online gaming can be addictive. Additionally, online games give users an opportunity to interact with a wide variety of people.

Perhaps before asking the question "What types of technology are our children ready for?", we should ask ourselves "Are they ready for technology and social media at all?" With all the pressures that parents feel concerning social media and technology, sometimes they don't stop to consider that maybe technology is not a good idea at all at this time.  With big business fueling advertising of the latest, greatest advances, we're being led to believe that life cannot continue normally without it.  But the truth is, the human race has survived a very long time without tweets, statuses and apps. 

This is a post from our friend's over at SafeSoundFamily. They interviewed 17 Internet and mobile safety experts about how to keep children safe online, and Tim was one of them! Read the full post for some great information from the leading experts in digital safety.

It was only a matter of time: cyberbullying has come to Instagram.

In only one of the most recent incidents, a police report was filed against several girls in a northern California school district for cyberbullying on Instagram.  According to school officials several girls allegedly hacked into their victim’s Instagram account, then posted demeaning and “sexually derogatory information” on the twelve-year old’s account.  The victim’s mother believes the girls took this action to get back at her daughter after she complained about being bullied at school.  It took filing a police report to get the offensive material removed.

In the realm of parenting, television has gotten a bad rap. Many parents picture television as a mind-numbing device that will do nothing but capture their kids' interests with flashy images and crude jokes. From trashy reality TV, featuring the not-so-real — and certainly not kid-appropriate — lives of fake celebrities to mindless TV programs — like Nickelodeon's enduring favorite "Sponge Bob Square Pants," there certainly is plenty on TV that parents may not want their little ones watching. If you're a parent, bothered by the lack of quality for children programming and contemplating tossing your TV out the nearest window, hold on a minute.

The Online Streaming Option

If you want to entertain your tot, but don't want to flip on the TV, you do have other options. Thanks to the proliferation of online streaming, you can now better tailor your child's viewing experience through the selection of streaming options. Is your child struggling in science because he isn't interested? No problem, flip on "Wild Kratts" on Hulu, which follows the irresistibly exciting adventures of the science-loving Kratts brothers. Does he need to learn how to count? Try a LeapFrog program that focuses on numbers, easily located on the streaming system Netflix. Because streaming TV allows you to pull up what you want, when you want, it makes programs of this time more accessible and effective as educational tools.

We loved this post from Jeana Lee Tahnk over on Mashable so much that we thought we had to share it with our readers! Jeana is a high-tech PR consultant and writer who focuses on technology and digital parenting. She pens the Screen Play technology blog for Parenting Magazine and also writes for Cool Mom Tech and more.

It's amazing how much technology has changed over the past decade and how ingrained it has become in our society. And this is just the beginning. While a Mission Impossible-like society with holographic billboards, levitation technologies and GPS contact lenses scares the dickens out of me, I can honestly say that technology has truly paved the way for a more organized and efficient life. And it's made me a better mom in the process.

Instagram is one of the newest forms of social media that is being utilized by millions all over the world. Using pictures to communicate thoughts, feelings and ideas, this appeals to the younger masses especially and many tweens and teens are flocking to this form of communication to express themselves. Uploading their pictures directly from the applications on their phones or tablets using frames and decorations makes it easy and fun to use to connect with friends and followers.

But Instagram isn't rated PG and there is no actual filter or censorship of what can be shared. There is a ton of content on there that many parents would deem pornographic or simply inappropriate, which is why Instagram monitoring is key. If you're concerned with what your kids are watching, what they're exposed to on the internet and the company that they keep, you should be just as concerned with what they are involved in on their social media applications, including Instagram.