When I was growing up, the term “screen time” hadn't made its debut in the parenting expert arena. My parents needed to set limits on our TV time, and that was about where it ended. Of course we have a lot of other screens we need to worry about now, and they seem to be even more addictive than the television.

I know that my own kids are much more drawn to playing Angry Birds on their Android phone than watching The Disney Channel, and the teenagers I know are spending most of their time on Facebook instead of MTV.

For many teens blogs are a creative outlet, a way to develop a technical skill set, and a fun way to express themselves.

Does your child have a blog? And if so, what Internet safety questions to you need to be asking your blogging kids.

Question #1: What is your blog about?

Your child's first answer will be “I don't know... stuff.” But ask again with interest. Is it an online journal? A site dedicated to their favorite celebrity? A place for their favorite book and movie reviews? If they are very secretive about the basic contents of their blog, it may be time to get concerned.

This article was written by Heather Campobello from WebProNews.

A startling new study finds that kids are at risk for sexting, cyberbullying, and more at a much younger age than originally thought. A new study surveyed 20,766 children from grades 3-12 in Massachusetts. The findings are from a self-report so children may not

Following Mondays article on parental monitoring and why you should be doing it, I thought we'd follow up with some tips for monitoring his or her phone. I am noticing more and more teens scrolling through Facebook pictures and checking their emails using their mobile phone all the time. And it's not just me.

Facebook's recent acquisition of Instagram, a photo sharing app for mobile devices, shows that users are increasingly going online using a phone.

Even so, statistics show that far fewer parents monitor their child's cell phone as rigorously as they do other Internet-enabled devices, like a laptop or desktop PC. If this is you, don't feel bad – start keeping your kids safer today with these 10 parental monitoring tips for cell phones.

The recent buzz in the media is about the new movie BULLY. After failing to lower its rating from R to PG-13 the film is being released without a rating.

I have a weak stomach when it comes to watching kid-on-kid cruelty so I doubt I could make it through the film even if I wanted to see it, but BULLY is intensifying the ongoing national conversation on bullying and cyberbullying.

BULLY follows the lives of 5 kids throughout the 2009-2010 school year: 12-year old Alex, 16-year-old Kelby, 14-year-old Ja'meya, 17-year-old Tyler Long, and 11-year-old Ty Smalley. Both Tyler and Ty had committed suicide, so their stories are told by their parents.

Did you know that April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month?

Internet child abuse is disturbingly common and often happens right under a parent's nose. One in five children are sexually solicited online every year, and only one-fourth of them told a parent. When a predator targets a child, they usually spend several weeks or months gaining the child's trust before any real-life abuse occurs.

In honor of National Child Abuse Prevention Month, recommit to protecting your own child, grandchildren, or students by reviewing these 11 signs that your child may be involved with a dangerous person online:

1. Unfamiliar friends on their social networking buddy list

2. Unfamiliar contacts in their cell phone

3. Pornography, especially child pornography, appears for the first time on their phone or computer

If you have at least one child and haven't been living under a rock since the invention of the smartphone, you know about sexting. Sexting is the sending of nude or suggestive images via technology.

As a parent, this can be a little hard to comprehend. Why would my kids want to do such a thing? I'd like to highlight a few reasons why kids might get caught up in sexting:

Sexting as Flirting

In the bird world, the peacock with the biggest and brightest tail feathers gets noticed – so he fans them up and struts around just as hard as he can in order to attract a mate. Sometimes, teen sexting might be a little like that. In order to be noticed by the object of their affections, kids might feel like they need to send something racy and eye-catching. Or, a boyfriend and girlfriend may trade sexts in a relationship as a sign of their commitment to each other.

Sexting as a Joke

It sounds bizarre, but it's true. Some kids just send sexts to be funny or gross. They may upload a sexy picture to the Internet for the shock value, or just to prove to themselves that they can. (My guess is that this is often done on a dare or as a result of group think.) They obviously aren't thinking about the potential ramifications of their actions, and haven't matured enough to realize that protecting the privacy of their bodies is in their best interest.

Like everyone else who had a childhood, I endured a bit of teasing growing up. It was about silly things – like my ears, my shoes, my braces – but it hurt nonetheless. At least it was before the dawning of social networks, when I could go home at the end of the day and that was the end of it.

Today's schoolyard bullying is often also accompanied by cyberbullying, which gives bullies an invitation into your home and your life, 24 hours a day. They can bully you anonymously and in a group, on a very public forum where everyone sees it (and can even join in, if they feel so inclined.)

A cyberbullying survey from the Pew Internet and American Life Project says that 80% of teens have a social networking presence on at least one site, Facebook being the most popular. There is good news and bad news about that.

Right now I'm reading The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brainsby Nicholas Carr. He wrote an article for The Atlantic magazine a few years back called “Is Google making us Stoopid?” and this book is essentially an elaboration on that.

Carr is a technology writer critical of how the Internet may be affecting the way we think. Our heavy-duty usage of the web may be essentially rewiring our brains, he argues, and he makes a pretty convincing argument.

I automatically think of the availability of internet and facebook for kids to use for homework. When they research, they're not breaking out the encyclopedias gathering dust at the library; they're going online where everything is “scan-able.”

Are your teenage daughters on Pinterest? If you haven't already heard of Pinterest, you will soon. It's becoming super popular, especially among young women and teen girls.

Pinterest is an online display of anything and everything you like, which you can organize into theme-based collections called “pinboards.” You can pin your own favorites, but you can also surf around other users' pinboards and follow them, re-pin them, or simply hit “like.”

Like anything else, you need to teach your kids how to use the Internet if you expect them to use it safely and responsibly. Parental control software can be a good training tool, but eventually they need the skills to do it alone. Have you taught your children these 10 critical things about going online?

1. If you accidentally come across something inappropriate, shut off the computer and tell an adult.

2. Not everything you read online is true. From rumors to homework resources, no one is fact-checking the Internet for accuracy.

My last post talked about 10 things you must teach your kids to do if they are ever the target of cyberbullying. One of them was to spend less time online – and here's why that's important.

Cyberbullies want to isolate their victims and give them a warped perspective. They will try to convince their victims that everybody hates them. Bullied kids who limit their online time lessen their exposure to these messages and can increase exposure to real-life friends who like them and think they have worth.

As a high school teacher, I often run across the road blocks my school district has set up to inhibit students from using social networking sites during class time. Much like parental controls this is tactical maneuver from schools intended to protect the students. Unfortunately it’s not unlike sticking a finger in the proverbial damn. The plethora of social media sites that high school students have access to is astounding. And which ones are popular or trendy changes on a weekly basis.