A whopping 82 percent of teens aged 16 or 17 have a cell phone. While these devices are great for facilitating communication between parents and teenagers, they also pose many risks. Talk to your teens about these common smart phone dangers and make a plan to avoid them.

A Distraction While Driving

Texting and driving is so dangerous that it's illegal in most states. You're 23 times more likely to crash when you're texting. Teens who text and drive spend an alarming 10 percent of their driving time outside their lane. Dialing, talking on the phone, and reaching for the device increase your chances of getting into an accident as well. Twenty-three percent of automobile collisions in 2011 involved a cell phone. The same year, accidents where there was a distracted

The Today Show did a segment on sexting last week, and they couldn't have been more wrong. 

Read the full story below from our friends at Business Insider. 

Last Thursday, "The Today Show" featured a segment on the new and shocking discovery that teens use their phones to sext each other, even though they use their phones to do literally everything else. We first saw the segment on Slate.

"Today Show" host Matt Lauer tries to figure it all out: "So a teenage boy will be sitting in a classroom, there will be a teenage girl he's never even talked to, and he will pick up the phone and text her 'I wanna hook up or I wanna do this to you, are you willing?'" he asks in the segment.

While there is undoubtedly a lot of potential for finding knowledge and quickly assembling research via the Internet, kids that use search engines and social networks for school and pleasure can end up facing significant dangers. 

The internet is a truly wonderful thing. Never in history has so much information been so readily available. All it takes is a query and a few pecks on a keyboard for a person to immerse themselves in books, videos, periodicals, tutorials and countless other forms of media. However, as information amasses in databases all across the web, so does material that is unsuitable for younger audiences.

It's a common question when kids start hitting their tween years. They begin to grow larger friend groups, become more entwined with their social circles, and form new connections. They're beginning to develop some independence from mom and dad, and with that, the question always comes up: "Mom, Dad, can I make a facebook?"

Of course, this begs the question from moms and dads everywhere: How do I prevent cyberbullying? After all, today's news is rife of stories of children using the internet to harass one another, sometimes to the point where young lives are lost. It's a reasonable fear, and a difficult question to answer. The answer, of course, is to monitor your children's facebook page to ensure that communications are appropriate. Of course, there is always a balance between monitoring your children and giving them some level of independence.

The act of monitoring your child's social media accounts is not an unusual one, either. According to the LA times, almost two thirds of American parents monitor their children on facebook, and with good reason. In an era where the internet gives anonymity to almost anyone, kids are liable to make poor decisions. The worry isn't just that your child will be bullied, either. There is just as big a concern that your child will become the bully.

Our latest guest post for Internet Safety Month comes from Judge Tom Jacobs, the founder of AsktheJudge, an educational website for teenagers and the laws that affect them.  Here is his take on a big issue affecting teenagers both legally and socially today: sexting. 

As you know, it only takes a few seconds to pull up your shirt or drop your pants, snap a picture and send it to a love interest. Regardless of your reason for sexting, think twice before actually doing it. It’s an act that may change, or even end, your life.

Your state may have a sexting law. You may or may not know about it or what it says. If you Google the name of your state and “sexting laws” you can read about the consequences for sexting someone. The fact that your state doesn’t have such a law isn’t a green light for you to go ahead and send a sext message or photo to even your closest friend. This is the Internet we’re dealing with. Every post or image has the potential to enter cyberspace and go viral. You can’t take it back once you hit “send” no matter how many times you go back to hit delete or trash.

Consider the case of 13-year-old Hope Witsell. It started out as flirting, but quickly turned into a nightmare. Hope was in middle school when she sent a topless photo of herself by text to a boy she liked. However, it was intercepted by a girl who had borrowed the boy’s cell phone. The girl forwarded the photo to friends and it spread to several schools.

With summer vacation just around the corner, kids have much more free time on their hands for social networking than they did during the school year. With that absence of face-to-face contact and communication that kids are normally exposed to during school hours, cyberbullies are provided a “protective shield” from real-life consequences. Hiding behind the safety of a keyboard, bullies feel invulnerable to any possible negative repercussions of their behavior, making them far more vicious in their attacks. Consider the following few tips on keeping your kids safe from cyberbullying this summer vacation, when decidedly taking preventative measures, or if your child falls prey to one's attacks. Be sure to instruct your children on the proper procedures to execute if they encounter online harassment.

Don't Fight Fire With Fire

With the advent of social media and the fact that kids are spending more time on the internet now more than ever, parents need to be extra sure to pay special attention to what their kids are getting into online. In the past, one of the biggest concerns you might have had as a parent dealt with the kind of kids that your child spends a lot of time with. Now, social media sites such as Facebook give kids an outlet that can reach quite literally the majority of the people that your child may know. This can be just fine if your children are trustworthy and responsible with what they share, but some children cross the line, whether it has something to do with sexting, online bullying, or making inappropriate comments.

In the realm of parenting, television has gotten a bad rap. Many parents picture television as a mind-numbing device that will do nothing but capture their kids' interests with flashy images and crude jokes. From trashy reality TV, featuring the not-so-real — and certainly not kid-appropriate — lives of fake celebrities to mindless TV programs — like Nickelodeon's enduring favorite "Sponge Bob Square Pants," there certainly is plenty on TV that parents may not want their little ones watching. If you're a parent, bothered by the lack of quality for children programming and contemplating tossing your TV out the nearest window, hold on a minute.

The Online Streaming Option

If you want to entertain your tot, but don't want to flip on the TV, you do have other options. Thanks to the proliferation of online streaming, you can now better tailor your child's viewing experience through the selection of streaming options. Is your child struggling in science because he isn't interested? No problem, flip on "Wild Kratts" on Hulu, which follows the irresistibly exciting adventures of the science-loving Kratts brothers. Does he need to learn how to count? Try a LeapFrog program that focuses on numbers, easily located on the streaming system Netflix. Because streaming TV allows you to pull up what you want, when you want, it makes programs of this time more accessible and effective as educational tools.

Every generation has its list of potentially dangerous activities targeting adolescents and teenagers. While experimenting with drugs and online dating are some of the major trends these days, there's another pattern that's catapulted to the top of disturbing behavior among today's youth. Sexting, or text messaging, is extremely popular for individuals mainly between the ages of 9 and 18.  Parents should be aware of this new form of engagement and how to protect their children from its negative aftermath. Sexting refers to sending sexually suggestive messages, photographs, and signage to others via text messages on mobile devices or other multimedia tools. The items sent by users are typically nude pictures and erotic words or phrases. The purpose is to flirt with romantic prospects, invite dating experiences, and increase social status among youth circles. Many pre-teens and teenagers get involved due to boredom or peer pressure. 

Sexting Consequences 

Although it may seem harmless to some young people, there's several severe drawbacks to sexting. For one, individuals must live with the permanence of their activity.

Here you go: Our weekly roundup of the top safety articles of the week courtesy of SafeSoundFamily. Tim is featured twice this week!

Sexting is a growing trend as more and more people use cell phones for more activities. As an adult, the decision to sext is left to an individual (though still discouraged) but if your child is sexting, could he or she face criminal charges? The negatives of pre-teens or teenagers sexting are plenty but being prosecuted for child-pornography is also a possibility. 

How someone underage can be prosecuted:

Sending nude photos via text is a relatively new problem for law enforcement. Prosocuters try to keep child pornography from plaguing a society but your child could be caught up in it. Survey's show that about 1 out of every 5 teenagers have either performed or received some form of sexting. The problem is wide-spread and may only continue to grow. 

Teenagers from multiple states have been prosecuted and are facing criminal charges that could affect the rest of their life. Here are a few things that you need to know:

• Children are being prosecuted because most states and federal law consider any photo of a person under 18 to be a form of child pornography, no matter if the teenager was taking the picture of him or herself.

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!

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.

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!

This guest post is from Tina Kehoe, a stay-at-home mom of three wonderful kids and a frequent writer on digital parenting topics.

A little girl named Marie, who happens to be in eighth grade, recently received an anonymous text that reads “we are going to have sex next Friday after the dance. Or else." The little girl trembles in shock and fear as she ponders whether she should go to an authority figure or just live in fearful suspense, wondering if the sender is telling the truth. Another sixth grader in New York is plagued by the school bully, so he retaliates via text that “You and your sisters and mom better watch your backs. My dad has a gun."

In a world that is now run almost exclusively by computers,  cyberbullying has become a very real threat in the lives of our children and teenagers.  In fact, statistics show that among a population of 13 to 17 year olds, more than 43% have experienced some form of cyberbullying within the last year alone.  That statistic is staggering.  Cyberbullying takes on many forms, and each one is harmful to a child, causing anxiety, depression and sometimes even suicide.

Gossip

Gossip takes on a new definition when it's done online.  When we were kids, gossiping was mostly harmless.  And even though it spread quickly when one of your friends had a juicy tale to tell you, it's nowhere near how quickly gossip spreads online.  In just a few clicks of the mouse, information gets transferred from one person to another, causing an incredible amount of harm.  Through the use of social networks, any information is easily announced to world via a Facebook wall post.  Internet gossip can devastate a child.