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Friends, Fun and Fads
Staying Internet Savvy
By Kelly Burgess
The point of sites such as BlogSafety.com and Net Family News is to start parents using the Internet the same way their children do. Magid laughingly calls it "our revenge against MySpace."
"We're trying to start a conversation that's parent centered where parents, teens and experts can get together and talk," says Magid. "In other words, we're trying to get parents to do what the kids are already doing, which is just to talk to each other. Parents can network with other parents just as their teens do with other teens. It's all about being a savvy Internet parent."
Some of the sites teens use most often for their social networking are MySpace, Facebook, Xanga, MSN Spaces, MyYearbook, Hi5 and Friendster. Naturally, these sites are also used by those who want to target our teens in unsavory ways. Catherine Dempsey of Hoboken, N.J., says she had talked to her kids, ages 17, 15 and 13, about online safety from the time they each started using the Internet. Then, when she started hearing about sexual predators on MySpace, she sat them down again.
"I knew that all three of them had their actual pictures on their sites, and I told them I was worried about their safety," says Dempsey. "Basically, their response was to roll their eyes and say, 'Mom, the kids who get in trouble like that are young kids who either don't have any common sense, are looking for attention from the adults in their lives or are already messed up.' That was a real revelation to me: My kids had it together. I stopped worrying right then. There will always be kids out there who allow themselves to be exploited for whatever reason. I'd managed to teach my kids how to avoid that. It was clear to me that they were very active about avoiding those online pitfalls."
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Re: Friends, Fun and Fads by Archana Shekar on 11/13/2008 05:39AM
Nice article. Very informative too. A lot of information is gathered and presented to us, so thank for such an informative article.
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Re: Friends, Fun and Fads by LFabris on 10/29/2009 12:25PM
I use Facebook all the time and came across this list of apps that are actually useful (not games!). Thought I'd share with you: http://www.lawfirms.com/facebook-sex-offender-apps.html