As a parent, I worry about my daughters' self-images a lot. I worry about them hearing their classmates say “I'm fat” and wondering if that means they need to lose weight – at 8 years old. I worry about the sexualization of little girls at a younger and younger age.
I also worry about a disturbing YouTube trend where preteen girls post videos of themselves, asking viewers to respond to some variation of the question “am I pretty or ugly?” It takes cyberbullying to a whole new level.
Everyone these days belongs to some kind of social network - teens in particular are enamored with social media and facebook for kids. They love having the ability to know everything that their friends are doing at all times, all the time. One of those social networks is called FourSquare, and many of you know what it is, or at least heard it mentioned.
For those of you who don't know what FourSquare is; its a social network, most commonly used through an "App" on a mobile phone. Users are encouraged to "Check-in" when they arrive at any number of locations. Restaurants, bars, schools, offices and even homes and apartments have the ability to create a location where any user can "Check-in" and receive points for doing so. Companies most often use the service to promote deals and encourage visitors, but kids and teens most often use the social network as a game to see who can get the most points.
It may not happen until your child is 16, or it could happen as early as 6 – sooner or later, he is going to ask you for a cell phone. And when your child does, how are you going to answer? Your child's safety is a big deal, especially on a mobile phone, and you might want to consider parental monitoring or parental controls.
A cell phone, especially a smart phone, is a big responsibility. Here are 8 indicators that your child is ready to handle one.
He has shown responsibility with other big-ticket personal items
Why do teenagers do what they do? If you are the parent of a teen, you have probably asked yourself this question many, many times. When they have access to the internet, those questions are even more prevelant with the addition of ones like: are my kids safe on social networks, at what age is facebook for kids a good dicision- Well now we know. This article provides 5 interesting, scientific explanations of why our teens do what they do. This article was originally published by Mental Floss.
The Number 1 reasons stated in the article is:
We hear a lot about Facebook for kids and age these days. Mark Zuckerburg himself has said that he thinks the age minimum of 13 should be lifted. And plenty of kids as young as 9 and 10 are on Facebook nothwithstanding the age minimum, some of them with mom and dad's full approval.
But here are 10 safety reasons that your preteen should not be on Facebook:
1. Helping your preteen create a Facebook account is helping them lie about their age to skirt the 13-year-old age minimum. Not only are you teaching your child that you think it's okay to fudge the truth sometimes, you're setting a dangerous precedent that if you think you know better than the rule, you can break it.
20-year-old Donnell Young of Oakdale, California was arrested this week on suspicion of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl he met on Facebook. Kids safety online is a serious topic and needs serious consideration.
The assault occurred in January, but the two had been exchanging comments on the social networking site since December. Young requested nude photos and told the girl that a fictitious friend of his was interested in meeting her and offered to arrange a meeting between the two.
Internet safety is a big deal if you have kids in your house, and even if you dont it should be taken seriously. Kids safety online is reliant on the measures you take to protect them before they ever log on. Here are 5 easy tips to keeping yourself and you kids safe online:
Install firewall, anti-spyware, and antivirus software, and update them often.
Don’t open e-mails from someone you don’t know, download software from source you don’t trust, or enter “free” contests from companies you don’t recognize.
uKnowKids is committed to protecting the safety and reputation of children whenever and wherever they go online. Other companies have also jumped in the arena to try to protect kids online in various sectors.
Word Bully is developed by Iconosys, a company designed to address the pitfalls in mobile and smartphone technology. Word Bully is a smartphone app developed to keep parents apprised of potential cyberbullying – whether their child is the victim or the perpetrator.
Parents put a password on their child's smartphone, program in their own cell phone number, and are instantly alerted via SMS whenever their child's phone sends or receives a message that contains profanity, threats, vulgarities, or other custom words identified by the parent.
Cyberbulling is a particularly destructive, intense form of bullying that can devastate a teen or tween who becomes a victim. Adults can be cyberbullied, too, but if we can gather anything from the deluge of suicides in the last few years due to recurring cyberbullying, it's that cyberbullied teens and tweens are the ones particularly crippled by the effects of online bullying.
Statistics back up this particularly grim picture of cyberbullying and how it's impacted by age. The Pew Internet and American Life Project found in a July study of 799 families that 20% of teens say that their peers are “mostly unkind” online. Another 11% said that “it depends.” On the other hand, adults ages 18 and older says that only 5% of their peers are “mostly unkind” online.
We all know that texting while driving is dangerous – statistics agree that it's even riskier than driving drunk. But even if your child isn't even close to receiving his or her license, you're not off the hook just yet. Texting also presents a potentially fatal distraction while simply crossing the street.
In a recent study published by the University of Alabama, 10- and 11-year-olds were observed walking across the street in a simulated environment, several times while using their phones and several times while not using their phones. Researchers found that children using a cell phone took 20% longer to cross the road, were 20% less likely to look both ways, and were twice as likely to be hit by a car. Your kids safety may be affected by using their phones even when they are walking!
Cell phones have changed everything in our kids' schools, including the way they cheat. The old ways of cheating (tiny crib sheets or notes written on the arm in ink) have been replaced with a new kind of digital cheating. Cell phones are tiny, ubiquitous, and easy to hide – and 1 in 3 kids say they've used their cell phones to cheat at least once in school. Do schools need to adopt some kind of parental controls?
Cheaters have a myriad of options when they've got a cell phone, particularly a smart phone, at their disposal. They can store notes, text friends for answers, search the Internet for answers, or take pictures of the test and forward it to friends who haven't taken it yet.
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Aside from modeling good behavior by never using your own phone while driving, or having frequent conversations with your kids about the dangers of texting and driving, you can also use a mobile app like iZup to curb the temptation for your teen to text and drive and keep your kids safe.
The name iZup literally means “eyes up,” meaning that it keeps your teens from looking down at their phones when their focus needs to be on the road. iZup is compatible with Blackberry and Android, and it works using the phone's GPS.
Once the phone reaches 5 MPH (or another speed you select when you set up your account,) the app will automatically hold all incoming texts and calls. No outgoing texts or calls can be made, either, except for 911 or other numbers you authorize when you set up your account. It's a great app to enable parental controls in the car and help keep your kids safer
Currently, iZup is available for a subscription of $2.95 per month or $19.95 per year. You can put iZup on up to 5 phones with a family monthly subscription of $5.95 per month ($59.95 per year.)
Ever wonder what productive and yet still fun things you and your child can do on Facebook for kids and social media in general? Here is a list of 5 things your kids can do safely on social networks to prepare for having their own account.
1. Create family photo albums:
What better way to keep your distant relatives up-to-date on your family's activities?
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MTV's True Life, a reality/documentary series that profiles real teens in episodes like “I'm a Textaholic”to “I'm a Sugar Baby” (you can look that one up to see what it means), is now accepting auditions for the newest episode, “I'm in a Sexting Scandal.”
Sexting makes its way into the headlines on a regular basis today, so it's not surprising that it has also become the subject of a True Life episode. Almost every week, I read stories about schools cracking down on sexting, kids charged as sex offenders for receiving or distributing sexts, teachers dismissed for sexting students, and states drafting new sexting legislation.
At this week's book club meeting, the parents in the room were bemoaning how much our teenagers text. For those of us who are used to using the good old landline phone (bonus points if yours was not cordless), it can almost seem ridiculous. New dangers and scares for parents include sexting, cyberbullying, and everything in between.
One of the moms exclaimed. “My daughter will spend half an hour texting her friends back and forth to coordinate a school project when a 5-minute phone call would clear everything right up!” Our kids just text a lot – some statistics say that the average teen sends and receives over 3,000 texts per month.
Do you feel that your teen is truly texting too much? It can be hard to get perspective on what's normal for a teen, since we didn't grow up with the option of texting anytime, anywhere. Try talking to other parents to get a feel for what's normal for your child and her peers.
If you've seen one of your kids' text messages recently, you may have been concerned about what all that text-speak is doing to this generation's spelling, vocabulary, grammar, and general command of the English language. Do you need to?
It's true that text-speak is disconcerting to grammar purists, who shudder at the question “where u at?” or shortening entire phrases like “in my opinion” to “IMO.” Some English teachers also say they see too much informal language and too little structure in their student's writing, which could be attributed to texting and sexting.
However, studies like the one at the University of Toronto suggest that today's generation doesn't really have a problem switching between writing in “textese” to their friends and in more academic language in English class.
Even though it's not smart, a lot of teens are sexting. That is, they're sending nude or suggestive pictures of themselves to each other on their cell phones. Though sexting is still a bad idea for a lot of reasons, parents in Florida should know that sexting laws that could affect their kids have changed.
Under the old law, any minor possessing or distributing a sext where the subject is under age 18 could be prosecuted as a sex offender. The new law, however, is much more lenient. What happens now when a teacher or parent finds and reports a sext on a child's phone?
Cyberbullying is the use of Internet technologies to tease, humiliate, and harass someone. It might be mean text messages sent at all hours of the day, or degrading comments about someone posted to a website. Cyberbullying can have devastating effects on children, so read below and learn about the issue and how to help your child deal with it.
Spot it: A child who is being cyberbullied may:
Avoid using computers, and other technological devices
Appear stressed when receiving an e-mail, instant message or text. Withdraw from family and friends
Parents worry about their kids safety playing online video games for a lot of reasons: too much screen time, too often, too late at night, too violent – the list goes on. But they probably have never given much thought to a scenario like this one before.
18-year old Le Van Luyen of Hanoi, Vietnam confessed in August to the triple murders of a shopkeeper, his wife, and his 19-month-old daughter (inexplicably, he also cut off the 9-year-old daughter's hand) in order to pay for his online gaming habit
.Luyen was sentenced this month to 18 years in prison for murder and armed robbery. He took jewelery and gold worth around $100,000 after the crime was committed. He told authorities he needed the money to play Kiem The, a particularly violent online game.
Friending kids on Facebook helps you to stay connected and keep them safe from danger. But many kids feel trepidation about friending their parents.
Many parents who approve of Facebook for kids like to "friend" their kids to do a little parental monitoring. Doing something annoying or embarrassing might mean that you get unfriended, so use these tips to be a good Facebook friend to your child:
Pick your battles. If you are going to be Facebook friends with your child, it's pretty much guaranteed that you're not going to like everything they post. If you want to remain friends, don't mention the little infractions (their use of certain 4-letter words, for example) and stick to the big issues where their safety is really at stake (cyberbullying, sexting, dangerous friends, or sharing sensitive information.)
