Most teenagers use social-media sites and parents are wise to it, "friending" their kids and monitoring which sites they visit at an increased rate, according to a study presented at an educators conference today.

Seventy-six percent of teens are on social-media sites, with most -- 93 percent -- of them on Facebook, according to the Pew Internet study that examined the behavior of teens online.

And the usage increases with age -- a sign that parents are sticking tight to a rule that only teens 13-years-old and up can go on social-media sites, something such sites have been dinged for failing to police in the past.

Do you think you have a pretty good idea of what your child is doing online? You may even have parental controls or parental monitoring software. Despite all the effort you go through to monitor your teen's Internet activity, your kids may still be pulling the wool over your eyes in more ways than one, a new study reveals.

The 2012 Teen Internet Behavior Study from McAfee took a closer look at the ways kids 13-17 hide their Internet activity from their parents. Teens reported that their top 10 methods included:

1. Clearing the browser history (53%)

2. Closing/minimizing browser windows when parent walked in (46%)

3. Hiding or deleting IMs or videos (34%)

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?”)

Is Facebook creating a melting pot for online predators and cyberbullying by allowing kids under the age of 13 to join? Or can parents use the opportunity to educate, engage and protect their kids through monitored use?

You may have noticed that Facebook has been in the news quite a bit recently. There was the largest IPO in US history, there was a Mark Zuckerberg wedding, a lot of noise surrounding the IPO and insider information, falling stock prices, a new Facebook Photo app, and now most recently: leaked speculation that Facebook is exploring the possibility of opening its doors to children under the age of 13... with parental supervision that is. So what exactly does that mean for parents?

With the sprawling number of cyberbullying, sexting, and faculty/predator scandals of late the Arlington County School Board is Considering a Social Media Policy applying to teachers and staff. As reported by Whitney Wild of WJLA below: 

"In the wake of scandals involving inappropriate student-teacher conduct, Arlington public schools are re-evaluating how teachers can use social media to interact with students.

Apparently, parents aren’t the only ones addicted to spying on their kids. Worried about cyberbullying and facebook bullying Clayton High School principal Louise Losos came up with what she thought was a clever idea for keeping an eye on the students at her Missouri school. She allegedly created a Facebook account for a “Suzy Harriston” with a generic profile photo of a group of penguins. “Suzy” friended about 300 people before someone outed her:

"No one seemed to question who Harriston was. That is, until the night of April 5, when a 2011 grad and former Clayton quarterback posted a public accusation. “Whoever is friends with Suzy Harriston on Facebook needs to drop them. It is the Clayton Principal,” wrote Chase Haslett. And then, Suzy Harriston disappeared, say those who saw the profile." via Clayton High’s principal resigns amid Facebook mystery.

Although Facebook and MySpace might be the sites that first come to mind when I say “social network,” it's really more than just that. Lots of big, popular places that your tween or teens visits frequently are actually social networks, and the same kids safety rules and precautions need to apply.

Social networking is any web-based platform that allows users to connect or interact with each other in some way. Understanding that, look beyond just Facebook and think about what other sites fall under that definition.

If you think it fits a lot of sites, you're right. Most users like to have the ability to interact with each other when they're online – hence the option to leave a comment below online news stories, for example – and many sites now offer social networking in one form or another, even if that's not their primary service.

So what does that mean? Social networks can be anything, from YouTube to Xbox live to Club Penguin. If you want to search across the most popular social networks to see if your child may have a profile there, check out uKnowSearch here and sign up for uknowkids today to find out where your child has a social network.

What? My child? A cyberbully? Never...

It's easier to believe that your tween or teen could be a victim of cyberbullying than to believe that they could actually be engaging in cyberbullying behavior.

But statistics show that cyberbullied children are also likely to be cyberbullies themselves, at least some of the time. It may be in order to get revenge or completely unintentional. Kids may not even realize that some of the 10 behaviors below are actually forms of cyberbullying:

• Forwarding personal texts or photos. Sending on a sext or a private IM conversation is mean, and it could get a child in deep trouble or even suspended from school.

• Impersonating someone else online. Cyberbullies might post as if they were another person, creating a screen name similar to theirs or actually hacking into their account and pretending to be them.

Hey, parents. Just when you were getting used to this whole Facebook thing – you probably set up a profile, friended your kids, and are loving that you can communicate with all your friends near and far – it turns out that Facebook is becoming... uncool.

Facebook started as the underdog, begun by a Harvard sophomore as a way for trendy college students to talk to each other. Facebook was cool, it was a new discovery. People implicitly trusted the fledgling social network. Facebook for kids was the cool new "it" thing.

If your teen seems moody and withdrawn after spending time on a social networking site, the problem may not be cyberbullying – it could be a sign of Facebook depression.

Facebook depression is a blanket term for any depression that develops when a teen spends a lot of time on social media, comparing their lives to the posts of other people.

For some teens, social networks may end up feeling like a popularity contest where they always lose: they don't have as many friends on their buddy list, as many happy tidbits of news to tweet about, as many Kodak moments with their friends as everyone else seems to.

In fact, I felt the pull of Facebook envy when my sister-in-law sent me a link to her Flickr account. As expected, it was populated with pictures of her happy children having the time of their lives on various picture-perfect family vacations, and by the bottom of the second page I was already doubting myself as a mother.

Where were the kids with lunch leftovers on their faces throwing tempter tantrums? Where were the piles of dirty laundry, or the piles of clean laundry that never get folded and leave the basket? Was I doing something wrong?

So I can certainly see how Facebook for kids could become a depressing activity, reading about the fun parties they weren't at and looking at photo after photo of other people laughing it up with their BFFs. By immersing yourself too much in social networking, it's easy to lose perspective and measure your worst against everyone else's best.

Here are 10 signs that your child could be suffering from Facebook depression:

When I was growing up, the term “screen time” hadn't made its debut in the parenting expert arena. My parents needed to set limits on our TV time, and that was about where it ended. Of course we have a lot of other screens we need to worry about now, and they seem to be even more addictive than the television.

I know that my own kids are much more drawn to playing Angry Birds on their Android phone than watching The Disney Channel, and the teenagers I know are spending most of their time on Facebook instead of MTV.

For many teens blogs are a creative outlet, a way to develop a technical skill set, and a fun way to express themselves.

Does your child have a blog? And if so, what Internet safety questions to you need to be asking your blogging kids.

Question #1: What is your blog about?

Your child's first answer will be “I don't know... stuff.” But ask again with interest. Is it an online journal? A site dedicated to their favorite celebrity? A place for their favorite book and movie reviews? If they are very secretive about the basic contents of their blog, it may be time to get concerned.

The recent buzz in the media is about the new movie BULLY. After failing to lower its rating from R to PG-13 the film is being released without a rating.

I have a weak stomach when it comes to watching kid-on-kid cruelty so I doubt I could make it through the film even if I wanted to see it, but BULLY is intensifying the ongoing national conversation on bullying and cyberbullying.

BULLY follows the lives of 5 kids throughout the 2009-2010 school year: 12-year old Alex, 16-year-old Kelby, 14-year-old Ja'meya, 17-year-old Tyler Long, and 11-year-old Ty Smalley. Both Tyler and Ty had committed suicide, so their stories are told by their parents.

If you have at least one child and haven't been living under a rock since the invention of the smartphone, you know about sexting. Sexting is the sending of nude or suggestive images via technology.

As a parent, this can be a little hard to comprehend. Why would my kids want to do such a thing? I'd like to highlight a few reasons why kids might get caught up in sexting:

Sexting as Flirting

In the bird world, the peacock with the biggest and brightest tail feathers gets noticed – so he fans them up and struts around just as hard as he can in order to attract a mate. Sometimes, teen sexting might be a little like that. In order to be noticed by the object of their affections, kids might feel like they need to send something racy and eye-catching. Or, a boyfriend and girlfriend may trade sexts in a relationship as a sign of their commitment to each other.

Sexting as a Joke

It sounds bizarre, but it's true. Some kids just send sexts to be funny or gross. They may upload a sexy picture to the Internet for the shock value, or just to prove to themselves that they can. (My guess is that this is often done on a dare or as a result of group think.) They obviously aren't thinking about the potential ramifications of their actions, and haven't matured enough to realize that protecting the privacy of their bodies is in their best interest.