Kids are always collecting text messages, images, contacts, downloaded applications, check-ins and location histories. An Android device allows a parent to understand what the child is doing with their smart phone in just minutes. With an iPhone, parents review contacts and mobile images while also utilizing suites of family locator tools. But what about checking on the photo downloads and the issues that arise when kids visit photo sharing sites.

Parents Automatically Work to Protect Their Children

Almost like a knee-jerk reaction - parents have a heightened sense of protection of their kids. Its is natural for the emergent technologies to raise concerns, if not eyebrows.

The explosion of social media has led to the prevalent misuse of innocent social tools by predators. Today it seems almost inevitable that however small the chance might be -  your children or teenagers may have photos that will fall into the wrong hands.

There are so many ways for teens to communicate today - email, texting, facebook and now Tinder. Tinder is a new dating app that creates a collection of Facebook photos that it shows to other interested parties in the area. One of the best parts of Tinder is the local feature which means all the people who are interested in you are in your area.

Teens love Tinder for a number of reasons. First, is the instant gratification that it gives. How the apps works: a picture of someone pops up and the user has the option of clicking on a green button and if they don't like what they see they hit an X. The average teen is thrilled to find out who thinks they are hot. Tinder only gives the good news. If people see the pictures and hit the X the teen never knows about it. 

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 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.

Here is another guest blog post from one of our favorite military mommy bloggers, Samantha, from Hooah and Hiccups as part of our Military Appreciation Month. Throughout the month, look for more guest posts on our blog, our eBook becoming available Dec. 12th and our TroopSwap deal going live in the next couple of days. 

How Skype got me through my husband's deployment

When my husband deployed to Afghanistan, I didn’t know how I was going to cope with not seeing him everyday, let alone for weeks and months at a time.

Parents looking to protect their kids online know that there are no easy solutions. uKnowKids has worked closely with parents, educators and professionals to design a product that can be a helpful tool for parents as they put together their larger strategy for keeping kids safe. One of the most valuable parts of any stategy on how to keep kids safe with social media has to include that age-old tool of parents everywhere: The conversation.

So how do you bring up conversations about your child's online life?

1. Treat social networks as a natural part of your child's life. For today's generation of kids, there is little difference between online and offline. Relationships with friends and classmates flow seamlessly between chats in the lunchroom and chats online. So while you think you're discussing facebook safety for teens, your child will think you're just discussing life

Has Formspring become a topic of daily conversation in your house? Or, more likely, you may have heard your teen saying “Formspring” and had no clue what they were talking about.

The idea of Formspring is simple enough. It's a fun, social forum where people ask and answer questions. You can ask one person, a group, or everyone on Formspring.

Questions you might see can be silly (“How much wood could a woodchuck chuck?”) or thought-provoking (“Do you think you can love someone who is fundamentally different from you?”) Teens  also use Formspring to take the temperature of what's normal with their peers (“Do you get along with your parents?”)

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.

Every parent knows that Facebook for kids and children on social networking sites need to vigilantly safeguard their privacy.  Apparently lawmakers know that too, and legislators in California are proposing a new bill aimed at protecting the privacy of social networking users.

Initially, the proposed bill only applied to users under 18, but that provision has since been struck and the bill would now apply to users across the board regardless of age. It would require social networking websites to:

Every site has a brand in the collective opinion of your teen's peers – ask and your kids can most likely tell you which social network is for professionals, older people, or younger teens. What has your kids safety to do with that? (They can probably also name the social networks where they are most likely to be approached by shady characters, scam artists, and pedophiles.) And when it comes to what's hot or what's popular, social networks are constantly evolving.

When social networking seriously appeared on the market in 2003, Friendster was the emergent king. It was one of the first of its kind to really take root, and became extremely popular. Everyone who was anyone was on Friendster.