Elementary School Kids Using Facebook

A Tennessee elementary principal is warning parents that many children in his school are using Facebook, seemingly to attract a boyfriend or girlfriend. While this is not shocking, it should put internet safety for their kids as paramount in parents' minds.

http://ydurl.com/p6xw

Parents understand most children are still learning how to interact socially at that age, but yet the 20-30 hours a week the kids spend on social networking sites are mostly unsupervised. This is a recipe for trouble or worse. Internet predators prey on these unsuspecting and impressionable youngsters looking for attention. Cyber-bullies use social networks to threaten and scare them.

Parents need to protect their children from these unfortunate realities, and YouDiligence (www.youdiligence.com) can help.

Boston Girl, 12, Duped by MySpace Predator into Thinking She was going to Hollywood to be a Movie Star

Chaulk one up for the MA State Police who were able to save a Boston girl, 12, who was lured to purchase a ticket to fly to Hollywood to become a movie star by someone posing as a 16 year old girl on MySpace.

http://ydurl.com/nr9p

Anyone who thinks that MySpace and Facebook are safe from creeps who prey on children needs to wake up. Parents need to protect their children and teach them about internet safety and using socal networks responsibly.

This story could have ended much worse. I am relieved for this girl and her parents that she is safe at home tonight.

YouDiligence helps parents protect their children from online predators and cyber-bullies.

BSOT = Be Safe Online Tonight

Posting On Social Networking Sites Creates a Permanent Record

Remember when you were in junior high and the principal used to scare you into believing that if you didn't behave that it would go down on some all powerful "permanent record"? Well now that permanent record actually exists -- and worse, it's a public forumn. Internet safety is something all parents should teach their kids from the very beginning of internet use.

Social Networking can be a great tool and a harmless way to interact with friends. But there are dangers, not the least of which is that everything you post, is now there for posterity as this article highlights.

http://ydurl.com/ggvs

Whether it's MySpace, Facebook, or any other site, if you post it, someone can find it, access it, and expose it.

YouDiligence (www.youdiligence.com) helps protect kids futures, hopefully keeping their "permanent record" as clean as possible in the internet era.

5600 -- Really? Facebook Only Identifies 5600 Sexual Predators' Accounts

The sincerity of social networking sites regarding Internet safety can be questioned after the latest news from Facebook. See this TechDirt post:

http://techdirt.com/articles/20090220/1017023844.shtml#comments

During a week of taking a public relations beating and a subsequent user rebellion over claiming perpetual ownership rights to the content posted by its users, Facebook followed MySpace's lead to identify and remove known, convicted sexual predators from its site. What's curious is that out of Facebook's 100+ million subscribers only 5600 were registered sexual predators. By contrast, MySpace found over 90,000 -- this also seems really low when compared to their number of subscribers, which they put at 200+ million.

5600 -- Really? That's about as believable as Alex Rodriguez's partial-kind-of-not-so-much-yeah-I-was-young-and-dumb (hey it worked for Michael Phelps) explanation of his steroid use. One has to ask several questions:

• How hard did Facebook really look?


• How committed is Facebook to Internet safety?


• Is Facebook really concerned about the safety of their users?

We should probably commend the social networks for however reluctantly beginning to take small steps towards making their product safer. However it clearly further identifies the need for parents to protect their kids online.

YouDiligence (www.youdiligence.com) helps parents with this daunting task. YouDiligence doesn't rely on the honesty of sexual deviants to identify themselves. It works even if false identities are being used. YouDiligence scans the content itself of what is posted on kids pages, helping parents identify suspicious and troubling posts. Parents have the control to customize the search criteria that's used to alert them to troubling posts by their children and others on their children's sites. Once an issue is identified, YouDiligence emails the parent an alert in real-time.

BSOT = Be Safe Online Tonight

Fallout Continues From Michael Phelps' Multi-Million Dollar Bong Photo

The second and third tier consequences are flowing in from Michael Phelps now famous pot smoking lapse of judgement. The latest? As reported in this New York Times article, he has been suspended for 3 months from competition and he is losing one of his primary sponsors because he did not project the image that Kellogg's wanted for its kids cereals.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/02/05/sports/AP-SWM-Phelps-Suspended.html

Parents, kids, and college athletes all have a lot to lose if their indiscretions are posted online or in the paper as it was in this case. Parents have the added responsibility of helping protect their kids from posting similarly damaging photos, videos or comments on the Internet for anyone in the world to see. It can impact their futures, and they need to look no further than the most recent American sports hero to see how quickly the tide can turn. YouDiligence helps parents protect and manage the online reputations of their kids.

BSOT = Be Safe Online Tonight

Social Networking & College Athletic Scholarships a Double Edged Sword

This story in February 1's Rocky Mountain News suggests there are a number of specialized college athletic recruiting social networking sites that are popping up across the country that are selling themselves as a way for high school athletes to connect with college coaches -- and maybe more importantly it signifies a trend where creative athletic programs and coaches are embracing social networking as a viable mechanism to reach high school athletes. One of the sites that isn't mentioned in the article, but is gaining traction nationally is: http://www.globalsports.net/.

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2009/feb/01/social-networking-new-face-high-school-recruiting/

It has always been a challenge for high school athletes who are not in the "revenue" sports of football and men's/women's basketball to get noticed if they are not in the top 200 recruits nationally of their sports. Likewise it has always been a challenge for the coaches at small colleges and in non-revenue sports at Division I schools to get to the far corners of the country to see athletes on very small recruiting budgets.

In years past, parents have tried to fill this void by spending hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars putting together DVD highlight reels of their kids' athletic performances. They sent these tapes to dozens or even hundreds of coaches in hope they might look at their video over the 1000+ other vidoes that had come in.

With the economy shredding recruiting budgets for almost every level of college sports, it has hit smaller colleges and non-revenue sports even harder. This has forced coaches to seek out and even embrace technology as their friend - learning about and using the technology like social networking that is available -- within NCAA and NAIA guidelines -- to connect to the lesser-known athletes from small to previously unheardof high schools.

It is a win-win for the athlete and the coach. There are a lot of talented high school athletes who never played beyond the 12th grade because they never had the chance to be seen by a recruiter or a coach. Now they can, and it seems so far, everyone wins.

Now, while these recruiting social networking sites are designed to specifically enhance a high school athlete's chance to connect with college coaches, other social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook are being used by college admissions offices as a litmus test as to whether or not they want to accept some students into their freshman class. Parents, don't be fooled, most high schoolers have a MySpace and/or Facebook page.

For the parents of athletes who are working so hard to get your kids recruited, don't let the latter happen to you. YouDiligence is a service that alerts you by email to potentially troubling posts on your kid's MySpace and Facebook pages -- the very things that college admissions offices are looking for. Now you can protect your kids' reputation by having them remove potentially problematic posts before collegiate admissions officers get to see them. The first month is free -- http://www.youdiligence.com.

BSOT = Be Safe Online Tonight

Using Facebook to Apologize & YouDiligence to Protect

For those who have yet to see the photo that surfaced in the London tabloids of American Olympic hero Michael Phelps taking a hit off of a marijuana bong, here is the link to the story and the photo.

http://snipr.com/b35fo

It's amazing that this took place in November and it is just now getting out. Phelps has quickly admitted his mistake, apologized and said it would never happen again. Interestingly, he chose his Facebook page as the primary release point for his apology. This is a real sign of the times, and since he has nearly 2 million fans on Facebook, it was a sure way to reach his most loyal supporters quickly, and a testament to the efficacy of social networking.

Here is what his agent at Octagon came up with for him, and is posted on his Facebook page:

I engaged in behavior which was regrettable and demonstrated bad judgment. I’m 23-years-old, and despite the successes I have had in the pool, I acted in a youthful and inappropriate way, not in a manner that people have come to expect from me. For this, I am sorry. I promise my fans and the public – it will not happen again.

Parents of tweens and teens across the country are shaking their heads right now because this, on a much smaller scale -- but a more important one to them -- is the very thing they are afraid of happening to their child. They are worried about what their kids are doing and are worried that someone may post similarly damaging party photos of their kids on a MySpace or Facebook page for the entire world to see and the subsequent damage to the reputations such photos might have on their kids.

We developed YouDiligence to help parents protect their kids from negative exposure on social networking sites -- exposure that can ruin the kid's reputation.

If you are worried about what your kid is posting to a social networking site, you should subscribe: http://www.youdiligence.com/. The first month is free and it may just keep your kid from posting things -- like the photo of Michael Phelps -- which might impact the decision of an admissions officer at the college they hope to attend.

BSOT = Be Safe Online Tonight

YouDiligence is Effective at Identifying Cyber Bullying

One question I get asked a lot is "How can YouDiligence help my child if they are being cyber bullied. I have their login and password, and can check whenever I want." It is a good question. I usually answer this question with the following points.

First off, just having a login and password can be a false sense of comfort. My brother had his kids' login and password, but rarely went into their pages. Episodes of cyber bullying can happen very quickly. Even if you as a parent go in once every two weeks, a lot can happen in two weeks.

One of the critical features of YouDiligence is the real-time nature of alerts and reports. If you're child is starting to experience cyber bullying, you want to know today, not happen upon a glimpse of this two weeks down the line.

Another very important piece of information is how is your child behaving themselves in the episode. Is their behavior in some way encouraging a cyber bully? Is there a single individual or group involved in the episode(s)? YouDiligence can help a parent analyze a situation by looking at their child's comments on others' pages. If one tried to do this without YouDiligence, the task becomes an arduous and time consuming activity.

YouDiligence saves time and helps parents be involved in a less invasive, but more effective way than simply blindly searching their kids' sites for that proverbial needle in a haystack. Now parents can know what they're looking for and if something of consequence is happening in real-time.

Attorneys General, Social Networking Companies and Internet Predators

New study challenges attorneys general on predator danger and the link below describes the debate on this issue:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-19518_3-10151959-238.html

This debate will continue, but what is necessary no matter the danger, is that parents have technologies to counter the risks and realities that may come with social networking.

It may seem simplistic but parents would not allow their 10 year olds to spend hours at the park unsupervised with no knowledge of the scope and nature of their activities. Yet who can expect a parent to want to -- or have the time to -- read through all the content, posts and links of a kid's social networking site?

We created YouDiligence to bridge the gap, raise awareness and help parents and kids have collaborative discussions about the boundaries of on line social networking.

About YouDiligence

YouDiligence is a Vermont-based company with affiliate offices in Indiana and Washington, D.C. Our mission is to help parents deal with the growing social networking phenomenon.

YouDiligence is a tool that allows parents to feel comfortable about their kids' activities on social networking sites while at the same time respecting their kids' desire for privacy.

Concurrently UDiligence is helping collegiate athletic departments educate their athletes about responsible social networking.

More than just a service: At Youdiligence part of our mission is to raise awareness and offer the best tools concerning internet safety and online reputation management in service of creating an online experience that is safe and gratifying for people of all ages and backgrounds.