This Military Appreciation Month guest post comes from one of our favorite Military Mommy Bloggers, Lori, over at Air Force Wife Life. Check out her blog and read below about why she loves Zoodles, the kid-safe internet browser. 

Why I love Zoodles

Currently I’m living overseas in the Middle East with my husband and our two extremely cute and extremely curious children. I’m writing this because I’d like to share with you a service that I recently stumbled upon. I’m so very glad that I did!

Today's parents are aware of the dangers of social networks like Facebook and are careful to establish a system for parental monitoring of their child's online activities. This may involve having the password to the child's social media accounts and even restricting activity to a family computer in a common area in the home. But that may not be enough to keep your kids safe.

This is an original post from one of our favorite bloggers, Shivani Cotter of TrendingMom.com. You can read this article, and many more, here.

Some people really are just jerks… either that, or they have no concept of reality.

Christmas seems to bring out the best and worst in people.  What we tend to forget as we grow older is that it is truly a magical time for the little one’s in this world.  I read something disturbing tonight.

Your goal is to have regular conversations with your child about what's going on in his or her social networking universe, but if you're constantly interrupting with “Wait, what's a timeline?” or “You can video chat in Facebook?” you will quickly alienate your teen. If you want to be serious about parental monitoring, you have to know the channels your child is using.

Knowing the basic Facebook terminology, the world's most popular social network, helps you understand what social networking means to your child and facilitates an ongoing conversation about Internet safety. 

Your teens know how to use the Internet. They've been using it since they were old enough to talk. But do they know how to use it responsibly, without compromising their safety or just plain being rude or irritating to others? If your teens are online, which they undoubtedly are, they need to be aware of committing these 10 Internet faux pas.

The most common use of a teenager's smart phone, aside from texting, is social networking. Teens with smart phones are extremely likely to use them to go on Facebook, MySpace, or other social networking sites.

Recent statistics tell us that 9 out of 10 American teens who own smart phones use social networking sites. They also show that 9 out of 10 teenage smart phone owners have used their phones to go online in the last month.

Okay, the second statistic isn't too shocking: if you pony up for a shiny new iPhone and a data plan to go with it then it would be dumb not to use it. But here's the interesting part: teenage smart phone owners were less likely than their peers to go online using desktops or laptop computers. They preferred their phones.

We all know that the Internet has changed the way we do virtually everything, especially the way we get our news. The print newspaper is going the way of the dodo, and many papers are closing up shop already.

Our teens know that celebrity gossip, political upheavals, and world events are old news by the time they appear in tomorrow's paper, the nightly newscast, or the next issue of OK! Magazine. Why wait when they can find out about it on Twitter within seconds?

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.

Why do teenagers do what they do?  If you are the parent of a teen, you have probably asked yourself this question many, many times. When they have access to the internet, those questions are even more prevelant with the addition of ones like: are my kids safe on social networks, at what age is facebook for kids a good dicision- Well now we know.  This article provides 5 interesting, scientific explanations of why our teens do what they do. This article was originally published by Mental Floss.

The Number 1 reasons stated in the article is:

If you've seen one of your kids' text messages recently, you may have been concerned about what all that text-speak is doing to this generation's spelling, vocabulary, grammar, and general command of the English language. Do you need to?

It's true that text-speak is disconcerting to grammar purists, who shudder at the question “where u at?” or shortening entire phrases like “in my opinion” to “IMO.” Some English teachers also say they see too much informal language and too little structure in their student's writing, which could be attributed to texting and sexting.

However, studies like the one at the University of Toronto suggest that today's generation doesn't really have a problem switching between writing in “textese” to their friends and in more academic language in English class.

An MTV poll shows that kids are both more likely to use vulgarity and slurs online and less likely to be offended when someone else does it. The online survey asked 1,355 people ages 14-24 about the language they and others use when texting or social networking, and found some surprising results. Much of this language is closely associated with cyberbullying, sexting, and other hot teenage issues.

Slurs targeting women, racial minorities, and homosexuals are becoming commonplace online. Kids also admit that they are becoming blasé about reading words like “slut,” “fag,” “retard,” and even the N-word in cyberspace.

AThinLine.org is MTV's attempt to raise awareness and educate teens on the facts about sexting, cyberbullying, and digital dating abuse. More specifically, it aims to give kids the knowledge of what to do when those issues arise in their real lives. The information given is concise, easy to understand, and not preachy.

Some of the topics covered at A Thin Line:

Sexting. Teens are told to look at the potential consequences of sexting, keep private pictures on their own phones, and not to let themselves be pressured into sexting. And if they receive a sext from somebody else, to hit 'delete' rather than 'forward.'

Like most things teens might do to fill their time, online gaming has its pros and cons. Gaming improves hand-eye coordination, encourages problem solving, and can foster teamwork and social skills (in multi-player games.) On the other hand, too much of a good thing can be, well, bad and can affect teen kids safety. Several studies have followed the effects of gaming in teens, including the latest released by the American Psychiatric Association revealing a correlation between too little sleep and Internet gaming.