As part of an on-going blog series that began three weeks ago, we have interviewed some internet safety experts, parenting experts and industry leaders and are pleased to present our findings. Our questions centered around 'digital parenting' and what people thought were the biggest issues regarding this subject.  

Today we are featuring responses from our friend Tosin Williams, the founder of The Learning Period, an in-home tutoring service based in Los Angeles, CA.

uKnowKids: How has parenting changed with the introduction of so many digital devices?

A few years ago there was an extremely disturbing reality TV show called “To Catch A Predator.” The show was all about luring and then capturing men, who thought that they were meeting underage children for the purpose of sex. The show was taken off the air in 2008, but sent a chilling message to parents.  The sexual predator has evolved and is no longer wandering around playgrounds with a bag of candy.  They have become highly sophisticated internet experts, hanging-out online and infiltrating the sites where your children go.  But is the online predator a threat?

Statistics

• A recent survey that was carried out about internet predators, and asked over 1000 children aged between 10 and 17 concluded that:

• A figure of one in thirty three children had been asked to meet someone secretly.

• Just under a quarter of all child targets were aged 10 to 13.

As technology changes the way we live, young people find new ways to pick on each other. With the rise of the Internet and social media comes a new challenge. In the old days it was easy to tell when a child was bullying others, but now the lines are blurred to the point where kids may not even realize that their actions are intimidating not funny. Even worse, often the victims of cyberbullying are guilty of it themselves. Understanding the difference between bullying and cyberbullying can help you teach your children what is appropriate behavior online.

The Line Between Being Funny and Being a Bully

What appear to be harmless pranks really are not when done online. Once something is posted online, it is impossible to take it back. Here are a few things that kids may find funny that in reality is considered cyberbullying.

• Using someone else’s information to login to gain information on the person or to post information under their login information. 

Another big thanks to the SafeSoundFamily team for pulling together the 25 best family safety articles this week from many great sources--online, TV and print! We highlighted them last week, and were so impressed with the articles that made the list this week, that we had to share them with our readers.  SafeSoundFamily is free resource for home security information and alarm systems. Check them out!

As part of an on-going blog series that began two weeks ago, we have interviewed some internet safety experts, parenting experts and industry leaders and are pleased to present our findings. Our questions centered around 'digital parenting' and what people thought were the biggest issues regarding this subject.  

Cyberbullying has emerged as a new and pressing problem for schools and parents alike. The internet allows young people to participate in a world utterly removed from adult supervision: a world where bullying thrives and intimidation and harassment go unnoticed and unpunished by authority figures. 

Cyberbullying can take many forms – all of which can be potentially devastating. Cybullies may use threats of physical violence to frighten a child but, more often, they will use intimidation to cow and torture a child. They may either threaten to or actually post derogatory information about a child on popular social networking sites, like Facebook or Twitter, and they may use mobile devices to keep in constant contact with their target.

Cyberbullying, regardless of the form it takes, can be exceptionally harmful. Children and young adults are very susceptible to the emotional damage bullying and cyberbullying can cause, and, as Sameer Hinduja, Ph.D. and Justin W. Patchin, Ph.D. argue in their paper “Cyberbullying and Suicide,” cyberbullying can make young adults significantly more likely to consider suicide. Hinduja and Patchin find that this particular kind of adolescent peer aggression makes its victims twice as likely to attempt suicide compared with those who have not experienced it.

Keeping your kids safe on the internet can feel overwhelming and exhausting.  Between time spent researching safety tips, monitoring your kids' digital whereabouts, and arguing with them about online restrictions, a significant amount of your family time can be spent dealing with digital parenting issues. Several online websites can put a little fun back in to the process by teaching your kids digital safety while they play games and learn valuable lessons about staying safe online.  As a bonus for parents, it allows you to say to yes to an online experience, instead of always saying no; take those brownie points where you can get them!

Spotlight: A special thanks to Erin Raub and the SafeSoundFamily team for pulling together a weeks worth of great articles! The Web publishing team at Safe Sound Family consists of highly-skilled writers and editors who are passionate about and experts on family safety issues. Their team is dedicated to providing great advice and useful tips and information on home security and overall family safety topics. This week they included two articles from our parenting blog and we're excited about the posibitily of working with them in the future! Enjoy!

As part of an on-going blog series that began last week, we have interviewed some internet safety experts, parenting experts and industry leaders and are pleased to present our findings. Our questions centered around 'digital parenting' and what people thought were the biggest issues regarding this subject.  

We were shocked and horrified to see that beautiful Kaitlyn Collins, a former Green Bay Packers cheerleader, was the victim of cruel and malicious bullying on Facebook when a picture of her was posted to an opposing teams fan page. If this can happen to an NFL cheerleader, someone seemingly immune to this behavior, think of how many regular children and teens this is happening to day in and day out. Tim Woda has created some tips that every parent should follow that will help prevent cyberbullying from devastating a child in their family.

• Understand the technology that your child is using.  Be familiar with all the functions of the sites your child is using including social networks, gaming systems, mobile phones, chat sites, etc. Some of these could have messaging or photo-sharing options that you might not even be aware of.

We know we have been blogging a lot about sexting lately, but it is a serious issue that we want all parents to be informed about. Here we discuss the perils associated with the sharing of nude or semi-nude photos, and tips to stop your child from making a big mistake from what they think is a seemingly innocuous action. 

When it comes to digital parenting, then, is that this new and exciting technology is often difficult to keep up with.  For example, what can we do about sexually explicit text messages, or "sexting?"  How do we keep our kids safe?

First off, know the technology.  It seems like kids will always know more about technology than their parents, but in this case the parents really need to do their homework.  Know what safeguards are available for the child's phone, including the ability to turn off or block texting and sending pictures.

Next, it is vital to keep the lines of communication open.  Talking to our kids is always good, but in this case, it's necessary.

• Set up rules about what sort of information and pictures are appropriate. 

As part of an on-going blog series that begins today, we have interviewed some internet safety experts, parenting experts and industry leaders and are pleased to present our findings. Our questions centered around 'digital parenting' and what people thought were the biggest issues regarding this subject.  

In today's day and age, bullying is not only done in person, but via the Internet as well. Physical altercations are just as harmful to a child as verbal ones, and a greater deal of harm can be done online, where there is a large network available for these bullying teens to put down their victims. They aren't just picking on them at school in front of a few others, but they are writing horrible things to them or about them on the Internet, spreading like wildfire, doing damage to the bullied child's reputation and psyche.

It seems like children are getting cell phones at younger and younger ages today.  As a parent, you're probably asking yourself, "Is my child ready for their first phone?"  While only you can answer that question for your child, there are a few things to keep in mind when making this all-important decision. 

 I am the mother of three little boys, ages six, four and ten months old.  My two older children each have their own tablets, know how to unlock Daddy’s iPad, often ask me to text their friend’s mothers for a play date, and know how to Skype.  It amazes me that children at such young ages are so proficient in technology, although I shouldn’t be that surprised since they are constantly surrounded by it, both at home and in school.

When I was their age, I was playing with Barbie Dolls, dressing up, and relying on the world of pretend to entertain myself.  Kids are definitely growing up faster these days and it is really scary as a parent.  I see eleven year olds with Facebook pages and I wonder, don’t these kids see each other at school everyday?  Do they sit in the lunchroom and text each other even though they sit next to each other?  Are we allowing technology to take over our children’s lives?

We’ve heard quite a bit about how Facebook is a forum for cyberbullying and how the mental health of teens can be affected by it.  Added to this is the fact that there are sexual predators out there, looking to prey on children or teens through Facebook.  These are issues that have received quite a bit of attention but there are other issues, not currently in the forefront, that can have an equal impact on a child’s life in the long run.  It may not occur to your teen to consider these issues but you can help them out with some digital parenting.

One of these issues arises when teens are applying to schools.  They may not realize it but admissions officials routinely check out applicants’ Facebook pages nowadays.  If they don’t like what they see, it may prejudice them and cost the teen his/her admission to that school.  So it’s necessary to consider the teen’s Facebook page as one of the components of the college application, just like the SATs, the academic recommendations and the application essay.  In some ways, the Facebook page can even carry more weight because admissions officials feel that they are getting the uncensored version of the story.  A student may be able to present himself/herself well in a college application but his/her Facebook page may tell a different story, especially if it goes back a few years.

This is a blog post from Cory Eridon at HubSpot about the newest Facebook feature Graph Search. We thought you all might enjoy!  Stay tuned for how this will affect Facebook monitoring and our parental intelligence system. 

Well folks, it's the moment we've all been waiting for. Facebook announced its big news today -- the stuff we've all been sitting at the edge of our seats for, the release we've been pontificating about (read what some of our ideas ... and your own were ... about Facebook's big reveal)! So ... what the heck is it?

Well, we were right! Kind of. It's a new search engine called Graph Search! As Facebook puts it, the new search engine, which is

The citizens of the 21st century must boldly address both the benefits and the drawbacks of rampant technology. While a first glance will yield the digital age's many advantageous capabilities for modern life, a deeper examination will uncover some of the more problematic circumstances that the technology likewise creates.

No demographic is more eager to embrace today's remarkable technology than children. They are quick to integrate both the technology and its applications into their lives, but this age group does not always possess the common sense that should accompany such significant usage; as a result, parental monitoring is an essential concern for all parents.

uKnowKids is pleased to announce that we have released our eBook entitled "Understanding Sexting: Nine Things Every Parent Should Know"!  This eBook is free of charge to the public and jammed full of imporant information for parents of digital kids!  After downloading and reading this eBook, parents will learn:

Many parents who took precautions to make sure that their children under 13 didn’t have a Facebook account failed to realize that Instagram was also a social networking site.  At first, Instagram just seemed like a photo-sharing app and some parents were even excited that their kids were taking an interest in photography.  Soon, they realized that, just like Facebook, Instagram gives you the ability to post comments on photos.  And that was where the downward spiral began, with kids posting nasty comments about each other and feeling left out when others posted photos of themselves doing things together.

But this wasn’t all.  Like Facebook, Instagram is full of unsavory individuals trying to contact others without knowing them.  There have been instances reported of kids being contacted by pedophiles trying to get their hands on photos of young girls.  They mask themselves as some type of legitimate business like a radio station running a contest, knowing that this is sure to lure young people.