Most people your child meets on the Internet will be harmless, but there’s still danger in making friends online. Child predators use the Internet to meet children and form relationships with them, the end result of which is to molest or abuse them in the future. This process is known as “grooming,” and it’s vital that you recognize grooming while it’s happening, so you can stop it before it goes too far.

Predators groom children by lending a listening ear, making them feel special, treating them “like a grown up,” introducing sexual speech or pornography to make such acts seem more acceptable, encouraging secrets, and introducing them to other adult behaviors like drinking and doing drugs.

So you’ve had the Internet safety conversation with your child: no giving out personal information online, no talking to strangers in chat rooms, and no sending elicit photos or texts. What next?

As a parent, you need to monitor your child’s online activity to make sure that your teen or tween is actually following the rules you’ve already discussed. That’s not spying – it’s parenting.

In March, Ashleigh Hall’s name was splashed across newspapers everywhere after her body was found in a ditch. The 17-year-old had done something that a worrisome number of teens do: made a new friend on Facebook and gone to meet him.

A 2006 survey commissioned by Cox Communications with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children reported that:

• 71% of teens reported receiving messages online from someone they don’t know

• 45% have been asked for personal information by someone they don’t know

• 30% have considered meeting someone that they’ve only talked to online

• 14% have actually met a person face-to-face that they’ve only talked to on the Internet (the figure for teens ages 16 and 17 jumps to 22%)

In Ashleigh’s case, her new friend was a predator who had lied about his identity, posing as a 17-year-old boy. Many were quick to point fingers at Facebook: can’t they do more to prevent people from lying about who they are online?

Sexting. To a parent’s ears, even the name is scary. Here are some of the straight facts about sexting, who is doing it, and why. And most importantly, how to talk to your kids about why it can be dangerous.

Sexting is using mobile technology to send a suggestive nude or semi-nude picture of oneself to someone else. It’s been around since about 15 minutes after the invention of the camera phone and the text message, but has gotten much more prevalent in recent years now that so many teens and tweens carry around their own personal cell phones.