This article was originally published in the Huffington Post by Sasha Belenky.

1. 'Social Media Is Destroying Our Lives'

Nancy Jo Sales, who wrote the Vanity Fair article that became the major motion picture "The Bling Ring," is back in the magazine with a look at teenage relationships in the age of social media. Adults may be shocked -- shocked! -- to learn that teens today are obsessed with sex. And Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Tinder and other online tools are seemingly robbing America's youth of meaningful, loving relationships.

“We don’t date; we just hook up,” one girl in L.A. tells Sales. "Oral is, like, the new kissing,” says another girl in New York. Boys pressure girls to send them nude photos. “They’re definitely more forward to us online than in person,” says one girl, Zoe. “Because they’re not saying it to our faces.”

A group of friends at the mall sums up the Catch-22: “Social media is destroying our lives,” one girl tells Sales. “So why don’t you go off it?” Sales asks. "Because then we would have no life,” another girl responds.

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.

Social media is a phenomenon that has swept over the youth of the world. With different ways to connect to each other, the appeal is large for these types of sites. The newest that has been on the upward trend is Ask.fm, and it has been for both positive and very negative reasons. Here are some things you need to know about the site overall and some tips on how to prevent bullying and cyberbullying through Ask.fm. 

The Site 

Ask.fm was founded in 2010 in the country of Latvia. It was created as a rival to Formspring and has a similar layout. Users create a profile in which they open themselves up for questions. Some of these questions can be fun and casual, such as “What is your favorite sports team?”

Read this piece from The Hays Daily News that brings up a great point that cyberbullying and sexting can affect males and females differently.

This is the seventh in a series about abuse and violence in adolescent dating and romantic relationships.

Q: What is the relationship between teen dating violence and abuse and technology?

Of the people interviewed (ages 14 to 24), 50 percent reported experiencing digital abuse. Among the teens, girls were more likely to have been targeted than boys at the rate of 53 percent to 42 percent, respectively. The respondents in the survey stated the most common types of digital abuse they experienced were spreading lies (online and in text messages), violation of trust and digital disrespect, mean messages online and in texts.

Ask.fm has been a hot topic among many outlets the past few weeks because of its terrible tendency to enable cyberbullies. Apparently, the company has listened to protesters and victims calling for action. The online social networking site has responded to the cyberbullying controversy by implementing new safety measures. 

Cyberbullying is not a new concept. Parents around the world understand the importance of monitoring their child's use of the internet, but the constant evolution of social media sites creates an abundance of obstacles for even the most diligent parent. Teenagers have the tendency to stay one step ahead of adults when it comes to finding new avenues of peer interaction on the internet. One dangerous social networking site that many parents may not be aware of is Ask.fm. 

The following piece from NBC's Helen A.S.Popkin is a great article on Ask.fm and the recent media storm around it. 

Popular with kids, and — until recently — obscure to many adults, Ask.fm is a Latvia-based social networking site where members interact by inviting others to ask anonymous questions.

Though the site has more than 65 million members who interact in more than 30 languages, it wasn’t until Monday that Ask.fm made headlines in the United States. That’s when kidnapping victim Hannah Anderson, barely 48 hours after her rescue, logged on using the name “Hannahbanana722." Her identity later confirmed by her grandparents, Anderson openly answered personal questions about her ordeal, posted by anonymous strangers. She also posted several smiling selfies — cellphone self-portraits — as well.   

Though innovative media platforms bring new ways for kids to express themselves and share their lives with their friends, they also bring exposure, attract bad influences, and introduce brand new ways to have unwise youthful decisions preserved on the Internet. Parents should keep a particular eye out for their tween or teen's participation on Vine, a video service purchased by Twitter in 2012.

For the uninitiated, Vine is an app allows users to create and share six-second, silent looping video clips on Vine or to Twitter or Facebook. According to Wired magazine, it's one of the top apps in the iOS download ratings, even after the introduction of video for Instagram. It's popular because of its informal, unfiltered, uncensored culture, and is uniquely positioned in the marketplace because of its popularity among young people. As tech journalist Mat Honan writes:

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. 

Keeping up to date with the evolution of social media can be a challenge for any parent, but familiarizing yourself with the latest trends is a vital part of digital parenting. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are the most popular social media outlets, but there are many less known apps that are gaining a large teen following. One app that is taking over social media is Snapchat. Snapchat, which is used largely by teens and young adults, allows its users to send pictures to their friends that self-destruct after they are viewed. Unfortunately, the promise of a picture disappearing is not entirely true. The person receiving the photo can choose to take a screenshot of it. Even though the sender is notified the screenshot was taken, once the recipient has acquired the photograph how they choose to use the image is out of the original senders hands.

With the allure of a picture vanishing once it is viewed, Snapchat has become an app that is widely used for taking photos of a sexual natures. While parents are aware of sexting by text message, they may not realize their teens have found a new way to send inappropriate images of themselves. Snapchat's advertising as a self-destructing photo app has created a false sense of security in teens and young adults. The reality that the receiver of the image can take a screenshot of the photo and use it any way they want without the senders consent is a consequence a teen may not fully comprehend.

uKnowKids was featured in Mashable in the article "Keep it Clean: 8 Tools to Block Porn and Sexting." uKnowKids can help parents prevent their children from sexting and the dangerous pitfalls that can come with it! Here is it, by Taylor Casti.

If Anthony Weiner has taught us anything, it's that sometimes naughty pics just aren't worth it.

Sexting and pornography can be a problem for parents with teens. For teenagers and preteens, sexting can have major consequences, the least of which being a bad reputation. Nude selfies are still considered child pornography and are against the law. Even if the photo never makes it into the wrong hands, one study shows that teens who engage in sexting are more likely to take bigger sexual risks (such as having sex) that could lead to sexually transmitted diseases or teen pregnancy.

The month of July brings you another eBook, and this one is for any parent whose child has asked to start their own, or any parent who wants to understand the basics and not-so-basics of blogging!

The internet and mobile devices are continually evolving. New applications and websites are developed each day and shared with the world. While many fade into obscurity or into their niche worlds, others truly take off and become more than just another app. While many of these trendier applications are meant for good, their impact and effects can be very detrimental and harmful. One of the newest applications available is known as Spillit, an application that has become as much about cyber-bullying as it has social connection. The following explains more about this new application and why parents, adults, and children should all be aware of its potential dangers.

What Is It?

Spillit is an application that has users create a login name and password to participate on the site. The ultimate goal of the page is to ask other users what they think about that individual. With a limited number of characters, other frequenters to a user’s page can answer the question. This is meant to help learn about each other and create a social connection via the page.

On YouTube, videos of fluffy kittens or a singing mouse can quickly take a child down a “rabbit hole” and a journey to explicit videos.  According to one study, children on YouTube can typically get to inappropriate material such as nudity and violence in only three clicks. 

Take Rastamouse, a popular children’s cartoon on YouTube, for example. While watching this child-friendly material, the viewer can scroll through “Suggested” videos on the right side of the webpage. These “Suggestions” range from more cutesy cartoons to music videos with vulgar language to other inappropriate things.

Crucial information about Snapchat and leaked photos from our friends at Phones Review.   

What a week it has been for Snapchat leaked photos and users wanting to learn how to take a screenshot within the Snapchat app, which is a real-time chatting app on both Android and iPhone. The other reason this news has hit the headlines for most majorly news outlets is thanks to the kind of sexting photos appearing on services like Snapchat Leaked.

Snapchat leaked photos and websites – two websites hitting the headlines this week include Facebook and a website called Snapchat Leaked. While some of the Android and iPhone owners using Snapchat might have thought every photo they took would be safe, it seems that a Facebook page and website called Snapchat Leaked has been posting these pictures after taking screenshots that users first thought was impossible.

The Snapchat Leaked Facebook page was removed within the past 24 hours, although Google still has a cache of that Facebook page, and the website Snapchat Leaked seems to have gone as well with some dodgy looking redirects now in place.

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.

Parenting kids in this modern age comes with challenges that our own parents never had to face. The advent of the internet presents modern parents and their children with unlimited opportunities, both good and bad. One of the main challenges that you face as a modern parent is keeping your child safe online. That makes knowledgeable digital parenting one of the most important components of being a responsible parent these days. The tween and teen years have always been fraught with angst, raw emotion, and social upheaval; it's just a natural part of making the transition from child to adult, but the internet has created a new level of trouble for this already fragile time.