Blog Blocker : The Blog

So you’re keeping a close eye on your teen, but it doesn’t do much good if you don’t know “WTF” they’re saying.

In reference to drugs, CBS News has a good article on the slang teens are using these days.

A few examples:

“Dexing” - Abusing cough syrup (also referred to as “robotripping” and “robodosing”)

“Special K” - A medication used as an anesthetic in humans and animals, ketamine is sometimes abused as a “club drug.” It can cause hallucinations and euphoria in higher doses. Synonyms include vitamin K, breakfast cereal, cat valium, horse tranquilizer, K, Ket, new ecstasy, psychedelic heroin, and super acid.

“Crank” - The stimulant methamphetamine. Synonyms include meth, speed, chalk, white cross, fire, and glass.

“Crunk” - This means to get high and drunk at the same time.

“Antifreeze” - Heroin. Synonyms include Big H, brown sugar, dope, golden girls, H, horse, junk, poison, skag, smack, sweet dreams, tar, and train.

“Snow” - Cocaine. Synonyms include Charlie, crack, coke, dust, flake, freebase, lady, nose candy, powder, rock, rails, snowbirds, toot, white, and yahoo.

“X” - Ecstasy or 3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA). Synonyms include Adam, E, bean, clarity, essence, lovers speed, MDMA, roll, stacy, XTC.

“Candy flipping” - Refers to a high that’s achieved by combining LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) or acid with ecstasy.

A Facebook group, originating by it’s founder from Edmonton, has 105 members and glorifies drunk driving.  Edmonton police have looked into it, but said the group members are only practicing their right to free speech.  I’d say it’s more a case of stupid kids being stupid.

Here’s the short full article.

The Professional Association of Teachers (PAT) wants YouTube to close up shop and shut down.

The PAT claims that YouTube is encouraging cyber-bullying by not immediately removing videos that the PAT claims to be inappropriate.

YouTube counters that it is but a tiny minority that break the site rules, and videos flagged by the community as inappropriate are reviewed and then removed when a violation is found.

I think that the PAT has their hearts in the right place, but they’re going about it the wrong way. Calling for the shutdown of YouTube and other similar video sites is an extreme position and they won’t get far with that attitude. They should instead encourage an active dialog with kids, parents and teachers.

For the first time in history, kids have been given a voice that can potentially travel around the globe with a few clicks. For parents, this can be a frightening thought especially for those that are unfamiliar with technology. Encouraging a public, open dialog is the best way to encourage positive use of this new technology.

Now, what to do about the food fight videos…

Remember back in January when MySpace said they had something called “Zephyr” in the works that would allow parents to monitor their child’s MySpace usage?

Well, the public beta has arrived, and they’re calling it ParentCare. Let’s just say that parents hoping for a quality product will be sorely disappointed.

The only thing you’re going to get from ParentCare is your child’s display name, location (which you would already know), and the age that they put in their profiles. That’s about it. Their Profile ID is given, but you better hope they have a public profile, ’cause if they don’t, the ID is useless.

Finally, sorry Mac users, but this software is Windows only.

I’d post a screenshot but the EULA prohibits that. In fact I probably shouldn’t even be talking about it. Brandon at IMSafer handled the Fight Club references that I wanted to make regarding this ridiculous policy.

But since it’s a PUBLIC beta, feel free to check it out for yourself. Here’s the ParentCare FAQ and the direct download link to the software.

… And any other sites their kids might be getting into as well.

This article on Canada.com does a fine job of outlining the need for parents to keep a vigilant eye on what their children do on social networking websites. Some stats from the article:

• 58% of parents know where to download parental control software, but only one-third actually use such programs
• Only 49% of parents know the online aliases their children use
• 26% of parents are unfamiliar with YouTube (Wiki Article)
• 33% of parents are unfamilar with MySpace (Wiki Article)
• 41% of parents are unfamiliar with Facebook (Wiki Article)

Article was originally discovered via JustMySpaceStuff.com

A few days ago news broke that MySpace found a whopping 29,000+ sex offenders using the site.

With an estimated 600,000 registered sex offenders in the United States, this means that 5% of all of America’s sex offenders were stupid enough to put in personally identifiable information in their profiles. How much do you want to bet that more than 5% of sex offenders are on MySpace?

I was unable to discover what exactly MySpace used to identify the offenders, but a comment on MyCrimeSpace claims that MySpace uses facial recognition software to identify predators. I was unable to verify this, but this story about a false positive hints that they may be using recognition software, since the woman falsely accused was pictured with a man who was a registered sex offender.

Update: As commented below, MySpace does indeed use facial recognition technology provided by Sentinel Tech. 

Neil at The Interactive has some food for thought. While MySpace is still ahead in terms of eyeballs looking at the site, current trends indicate that Facebook is gaining, and fast.

The culture at Facebook is more tightly knit, whereas the fake profiles, spammers, and corporate profiles on MySpace are pushing users away.

Linda at The Social Networking Weblog has a different take. She feels that in order for Facebook to make significant gains on MySpace, they’ll have to start making their profiles more customizable, as MySpace pages currently are.

I personally think that the site that ends up with the most kids, wins.

Facebook is driving hard for the younger market. With new widgets like Fluff Friends, it makes you wonder: What 10 year old girl could resist a cute furry creature for their Facebook profile?

MySpace isn’t slacking in the battle for your kids eyeballs either. Just yesterday the entire MySpace homepage was pushing the new Simpsons cartoon movie.

Regardless of which site wins, parents need to be aware of both sites and know just how hard they’re trying to get your kid to sign up.

We’ve covered this before. This time, North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper feels that it is time to require parental consent for children under the age of 18 to sign up for “social networking” sites like MySpace.  (source article)

Of course, there’s no mention on how Mr. Cooper plans to determine what qualifies as a “social networking” site. Or how they’ll go about ensuring that kids will not just be able to claim to be 18 years old.

You gotta love feel-good legislation…

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.

According to Hitwise, these are the current top social networking sites. They also found that total traffic to social networking sites was up 11.5% from the previous month. I’d say that’s some positive growth!

I found it interesting that they don’t consider YouTube a social network, because that would certainly be on the list.