Which way does your teenager prefer to communicate? Sexting and texting, or face to face?

Most parents would guess “technology.” But even in a world where teenagers seem glued to glowing screens… face-to-face still rules. Ericsson, the cell phone manufacturer, just did a study where they asked young people, “Which method of communication would you miss the most?” The answer should be encouraging to many of us who are worried about our teenagers’ growing dependence on technology. “Meeting in person” was the number one answer.

Do you ever wonder about the impact that excessive technology might have on us as a society? Probably no one is more concerned than parents of teenagers, because teens are much more likely to text, be sexting, play games online, and use social networking all the time.

Though scientists are still forming conclusions about the effects of a digital lifestyle, one new study suggests that frequent texting may lead to shallow patterns of thought and behavior in young people.

A kids safety nightmare for all parties involved: Nineteen-year-old Kaitlyn Dunaway from California was sentenced this week to five days in jail, 115 days home confinement, and three years probation. Her crime? Running over a mother and her 2-year-old daughter as they crossed a crosswalk while Kaitlyn was texting and driving.

The mother, 42-year-old Ling Murray, was critically injured and spent the next several months in a rehabilitation facility. The 2-year-old daughter, Calli, was killed.

Every parent knows that teen sexting is potentially really, really bad news. Sexting can spread around the school in minutes and humiliate the subject, or worse they can find their way online and become the common property of every pedophile with a broadband connection. But a recent research study also suggests that kids involved in sexting are twice as likely to experience psychological distress and even attempt suicide.

The Education Development Center in Newton, Massachusetts analyzed the results from a group of 23,000 high school students in the Boston area who were surveyed in 2010. The schools were situated in predominately upper-middle class white suburbs, so further research needs to be done on different demographics of teens.

Every few months, a new study is released in the United States or the U.K. giving new statistics and information regarding cyberbullying – the act of minors who threaten or harass each other (sometimes with serious consequences) using technology. But what might larger cyberbullying statistics across the globe, not just from one country, look like?

In a January 2012 survey for Reuters News, global research company Ipsos polled a total of 8,600 adults from 24 different countries to get a better feel for cyberbullying across the globe. The countries surveyed were Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Poland, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Turkey and the United States of America.

A student asked me recently: “Why do I need to know when Frankenstein was published? I have a smart phone—I can always find the answer if I need it.” 

He was right. And while I can expound easily and at length about how important it is to understand the time period in which an author was writing in order to fully analyze the novel, for most students in American high schools today, my lecture would fall under the “not relevant—tune out” category, and instead of listening to me, they’d spend the next twenty minutes ignoring my painstakingly planned lesson in favor of tweeting and texting their friends from under their desks.

Tweens and teens often spend hours grooming their blog or Facebook profile until it perfectly reflects their personalities. Facebook for kids is growing in popularity as a form of self expression and communication. In fact, that is today's teenager's preferred form. But is there a way for your kids to do it safely?

Blogging safety actually begins way before your child makes his or her very first post. Here are some key points about teaching blogging safety for parents to remember:

1. Sit down and talk with your child and why he wants a blog and what he hopes to accomplish with it. Discuss rules for what kind of blog he or she will be creating.

Teen and kids safety alert: Alexis Summers, age 17, was killed in a fatal car crash as she texted at the wheel while driving early in November. What makes her death particularly poignant is the fact that she died only 8 hours after her home state of Pennsylvania passed a bill to make texting while driving illegal.

On the way home from visiting her boyfriend, Alexis's car left the road, hit a tree, spun around, and collided with the tree a second time. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

Highlighting kids safety laws surrounding texting and driving:

When a state makes it illegal to text while driving, most of us breathe a sigh of relief that the roads are going to be that much safer from now on. But research actually suggests that this may be the opposite of reality, especially for teen drivers.

How old was your child when they got their first cell phone? 14? 12? 8? If your pre-teen is begging you for a phone of their own and telling you that “all their friends” have one – they're probably not lying. The average age of kids who receive their first cell phone is falling like a brick. So how much does kids safety come into play?

A Pew Internet Forum survey in 2009 asked parents of cell phone owners the question, “How old was your child when s/he got her/his first phone?” The average age was 11-12. Of kids who owned cell phones, 46% got them in the 11-12 year age bracket.

Sexting used to mean sending nude or racy pictures to someone else's cell phone, but today's teens are upping the stakes with a new kind of sexting. Sexting is evolving from pictures to video – and video sexting can be twice as dangerous and twice as risky.

Like most things teens might do to fill their time, online gaming has its pros and cons. Gaming improves hand-eye coordination, encourages problem solving, and can foster teamwork and social skills (in multi-player games.) On the other hand, too much of a good thing can be, well, bad and can affect teen kids safety. Several studies have followed the effects of gaming in teens, including the latest released by the American Psychiatric Association revealing a correlation between too little sleep and Internet gaming.

Online gamers used to be mainly teen boys interested in playing first-person shooter and car racing games. But the face of online gaming has changed significantly in recent years. CookingGames.com is one of the many recent start-ups that caters to the preteen girl gamer market. Its tagline? “Why should boys have all the fun!”

The free kids safe games at CookingGames.net are very simple, brightly colored, animated games with titles like Pink Girls, My Cute Puppy, and Justin Bieber Pizza Pasta. The free gaming site started out offering nothing but cooking games (variations of decorating your own pizza, cinnamon roll, birthday cake, and so on,) but has recently begun to offer additional categories like dress up, make up, kissing, decorating, and puzzle and word games.

The site is purportedly a safe site for girls ages 4 to 14, but that doesn't mean parents shouldn't be there to supervise. The kissing games are relatively innocent, but because the main object is to kiss your partner for as long as possible without being caught it is obviously not age-appropriate for some visitors to the site.

Have you used on the same passwords for the last decade? Is your Facebook account still using the default security settings? Are your kids safe? If so, you may want to think about the example your own Internet use is setting for your kids.

If we expect our teens and tweens to think about protecting themselves and being selective about what they share and with whom on the Internet, we have to model that behavior ourselves:

• Require a password to access your computer