As parents and grandparents, many of us worry about what our teenagers do online and offline. Many prefer to limit the dangers online that our teens face!

But, we are also very smart and understand that if a teenager feels pressure or just plain wants to do something, more times than not, they will do exactly what we have forbidden or asked them not to do.

MySpace, the social network, will today announce a tie-up with Skype, the internet telephony service, that will create a potential 330 million-strong online.  MySpace has struck a deal with eBay-owned Skype that will enable users to make free internet phone calls.

For those who may have been completely in the dark for the last few years, or who haven’t felt the need to see what the hype is all about, MySpace is a social networking website offering an interactive, user-submitted network of friends, personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, music and videos internationally. MySpace users have the option to delete any comment and/or require all comments to be approved before posting. MySpace allows users to customize their user profile pages by entering HTML (but not JavaScript) into such areas as “About Me,” “I’d Like to Meet,” and “Interests. MySpace has recently added its own “Profile Customizer” to the site, allowing users to change their profile through MySpace.

MySpace has a Groups feature which allows a group of users to share a common page and message board. MySpace will delete these profiles if the victim verifies their identity and points out the profile via e-mail. MySpaceTV: Watch and share your favorite videos, trailers, movies, tv shows, music videos, and clips..  There are so many things to know and learn about MySpace, but, don’t let that turn you away from knowing what is happening right in front of your children’s eyes.

The following is what some teens have said:

“MySpace is wonderful =] and I want it in school.”

“MySpace is really the only PRIVACY that we could have here at school now that they have taken just about EVERYTHING away from us all, whether its CELL PHONES or MP3 players or even an IPOD.”

MySpace members are now warning each other about the danger of sharing information online. MySpace said it does not pre-screen the content of its more than 50 million members, but encourages all of them to exercise caution.

The fact is, that MySpace has more page views per day than any site on the web except Yahoo. MySpace is both the location of hanging out and the cultural glue itself. MySpace and IM have become critical tools for teens to maintain “full-time always-on intimate communities” where they keep their friends close even when they’re physically separated. MySpace is one of the most well-recognized social networks in the world.  Make sure you know where your child is going, whether its offline or online.

Parents for more information, on MySpace go to: OnlineSecurityAuthority.com

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Is It Any Wonder Teenagers Love MySpace?

Technorati Tags: child pornography, child protection tips, MySpace and Teens, social networks

Two danger areas in a member’s profile provide far more information than they probably realize.  The first is where the member goes to school and the other is the list of comments from friends.

Children should be taught the dangers of exposing too much personal information in any online community.  As of now there is no way to conclusively verify the age of a new member. It’s definitely not an uncommon thing for an underage minor to obtain membership despite the the fact that the site’s minimum age restriction is 14 years of age. The younger a child is, the more prone they are to being taken advantage of especially online.

Discussion groups are one of the major activities members can participate in, and there are many that are alot of fun and very interesting, but, there are also some that are very questionable Groups as well. MySpace membership is needed to join these groups, view uploaded photos and participate in the discussion.  Membership is not required to view what others are discussing and what’s more, even if your child is a member of one of these Groups, it can be virtually impossible to find out. The search functions that are currently available do not allow you to see who is active in each particular group.

Parents who track MySpace and other online activities that their children are involved in, are often surprised to see exactly where they have been.  Most children are pretty good, but children are curious and that curiosity will occassionally get the better of them.  Many children and adults follow links that they normally wouldn’t simply because we don’t pay enough attention to where they may be going.

Keep your children Internet savvy, and explain the consequences to them on a regular basis.  For some children having an internet usage agreement is the best way to help them understand how important their safety is to you.  Visit Online Security Authority to download the OSA Agreement.

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MySpace Safety Info on Protecting you Child’s Profile

Technorati Tags: childrens personal information, deleting myspace account, friendships, predators

Would you honestly know if they were keeping a CyberSecret from you?  A CyberSecret is, in the most plain of terms, an online secret.  What do you know about what your child does online?

Anyone can strike up a conversation with someone they meet on a social networking site. Kids can put restrictions on their profiles to only allow friends and people they know to view their profile.  The problem is that many don’t and, too often, they put way too much revealing information about themselves online. Even when a profile is restricted, a kid has the option of letting someone in who contacts them and asks to be included in their network of friends. An appealing picture, a friendly query, a similarity of interests or someone who just sounds “cool,” is often more than enough for kids to make exceptions and let someone into their site that they don’t know.   Why?  This could drive you crazy trying to understand why your child would allow someone in where personal information is there for the taking.Don’t Take Candy From Strangers

Parents who haven’t explored these social networking sites think they are the same as their own high school yearbooks. For the few kids who are very cautious about their profiles, that may be true. But for most adolescents who are seeking sexual experimentation, social networking sites are a stage.  This type of stage allows kids to play, and be watched by others.

Most parents have the same feeling, ‘Not my kid, my kid wouldn’t do that, they know how dangerous it is” or “They know we don’t approve of that kind of behavior”.  But, these same parents can go online into places such as MySpace and see their daughter posing in her bra or their underage son drunk and disorderly hanging with his friends. They can see the kids they trust and think are wonderful in places they never thought their children would be, abusing alcohol.

Even good kids do stupid things. What is shocking to parents?  Seeing their own children in provocative pictures or seeing their kids friends doing the same or worse on these social networking sites.  The media is saturated with images of scantily-clad and overtly sexualized celebrities.  Teen sexuality is flaunted in the media, and it typically is not in the way that most parents would like to see it.  In real life a girl who acts on the mixed messages can be labeled by her peers as a slut. But how does a young girl find the boundary between being a slut and a prude?

Girls, in particular, are given mixed messages about their sexuality.  In today’s world, with so many means of media being thrown at our children, how can we expect them to be able to decipher on their own what is appropriate and what is not appropriate without our help?  What are your children doing online?  What are they seeing online?  Who are they seeing online?  These are questions that you as a parent must find out, and be able to discuss with your child.

What CyberSecrets are your children keeping from you?

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CyberSecrets What Your Child Doesn’t want you to Know

Technorati Tags: CyberSecrets, Keeping Our Children Safe, MySpace, Teens

In doing a little research on teens and MySpace, there is becoming an overwhelmingly high number of search engine results for public libraries who have decided to make MySpace pages to attract the teenagers.  Depending on your personal view of MySpace and the like and your view of how your child is able to handle such situations online, this may be good or bad.

No matter what your thinking is on this subject, there can be both good and bad to this kind of idea.  Lets list the good things: it has the possibility of putting more “good” influences in front of teens, it may spark their interest of books and reading, it pyschologically may help them to know that other adults are out there and may give them a sense that they should keep their actions more in line, and there are many other reasons this could be good.2SMRT4U.jpg

On the flip side I can think of many reasons that this would not be a good idea.  If parents are banning MySpace from home, and then sending their children to the library (assuming there is no great risks while there) and not knowing that MySpace is allowed this would be very upsetting, do libraries do background checks for the personnel that work at the library? and because we are talking about an online community, are libraries putting children and teens at risk because of the friends that they may be associating with?  How does the library control who is allowed to be their online friends?

There is no way to really be able to tell if a friend request that comes in is from a real teenager or a predator.  Allowing this kind of behavior online and allowing possible predators in the libraries group of friends may give the teens a false sense of security.

Why would any teen expect a predator to be lurking in the libraries group of friends?

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Is your local Public Library on MySpace?

Technorati Tags: Keeping Our Children Safe, public libraries, teens and MySpace

• Don’t open or read messages from cyber bullies. Your child can’t be bullied online if they don’t open or read messages from cyber bullies. Teach your child to curb his or her curiosity to read and respond to a message once he or she recognize a cyber bully has sent it.

• Encourage your child to tell an adult, if for some, their reaction to being bullied is not only fright, but also embarrassment and confusion of

what the right thing is to do. Coach your child to tell a trusted adult if they are ever being bullied.

• Report chat bullying to your ISP. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) can often block a cyber bully. Save the bully’s message and the screen

name, then contact and report it to your ISP and request they be blocked.

• If the cyberbullying is related to school, inform an administrator

Schools have specific procedures and rules to handle bullying of all types—including cyber bullying. Use your child’s school as a resource to resolve conflicts between students before they cause greater harm.

• No chatting while angry. Sending angry, hostile or taunting messages attracts cyber bullies. Make certain your child knows netiquette and is not using email messages or chat rooms to vent their own anger in a way that hurts others. This is how cyberbullying begins.

• If your child is threatened with harm, tell the police. Even if your child doesn’t know how to identify the individual who has made the threat, law enforcement has access to information and may be able to track them down and arrest them before they do harm.

• Be part of your child’s online experience. It can be a fun journey to explore the wonders of the Internet, and your children should see you safely exploring the internet as well.

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Who is Being Targeted When CyberBullying Occurs?

Technorati Tags: children, cyber bullies, cyber bullying, CyberBullying, Keeping Our Children Safe, Law Enforcement, MySpace, MySpace Guidelines, Safety Tips