Blog Blocker : The Blog

Some interesting info on parents and monitoring social networking sites:

While a high percentage of Irish parents say they monitor what their children do on the web, only 46% admitted they really understood what social networking was, despite the fact that 70% of children and young adults under the age of 18 use sites such as Bebo and Facebook regularly.

The research shows that while many parents believe they are monitoring their children’s online activity, less than half are familiar with social networking sites.

This shows a fairly large gap between what the parents know, and what their kids are actually using.

(source article)

According to ComScore, the social networking site Bebo has overtaken MySpace as the most popular social networking website in the UK.

Could this be a sign of things to come in the USA as well?

13 year old boy Casey Knibbs committed suicide after being savagely bullied online by his “peers”. The cruelty of teenagers in middle school never ceases to amaze me.

From the article, one of the teens involved allegedly threatened: “If you don’t kill yourself, we will do it for you.”

I was able to locate a dedication video to him, here.

I would like to extend my sincere condolences to his family. They must be having a difficult time now.

Two teens were arrested for posting pictures of people on Bebo.com and adding offensive comments to those pictures. (full article)

I think this raises some interesting topics for debate.  Should bullies be criminally prosecuted for poking fun at others?  How hurtful does the bullying have to be in order to get arrested?  Can we take this to the next step and arrest REGULAR bullies, instead of just cyber bullies?

Personally, I know a few a**holes from my highschool who should have been arrested, if for nothing else than to scare them straight.

A recent InSafe survey shows that a whopping 57% of all teens post private, sensitive information on their MySpace and Bebo profiles. Of those teens, 33% of them didn’t even know if their profiles were public or private.

Kids under 10 years old were the most oblivious to privacy issues. Privacy awareness increased for kids 10 to 13 years old, and steadily decreased for teens 14-18.

Parents: The best thing you can do is to have a talk with your kids, and it’s never too early to have that conversation … unless your child is really, really young. Once they start using the computer, it’s best to set some ground rules and use monitoring software to keep an eye on them.

A quick Google search brings up some helpful tips from Microsoft: A Parent’s Guide to Online Safety. All ages from 2 to 17 are covered.

A 12 year old girl with a Bebo profile received numerous graphic photos of men posting on her profile. The girl also had posted her cell phone number on her profile and recieved several text messages from different men.

From the article:

Karen, who has asked not to have her last name used, was called on Wednesday morning by a friend to tell her to check her daughter’s Bebo profile.

One man had sent six photographs of his penis, another had sent a photo of himself with an erection. There were a total of 134 messages from men posted to her account.

But she was concerned there was nothing parents could do to stop men prowling the website for children.