Where do these parents come from?!

This mom seems to have gone to the Lori Drew school of parenting. "Police are investigating whether an Elgin [Ill.] woman used nude photos of her daughter's 13-year-old ex-boyfriend as blackmail to get the two back together," the Chicago area's Daily Herald reports. As of yesterday (10/6), charges hadn't been filed, but the police say they're "actively pursuing counts of intimidation, harassment and child pornography possession." The investigation began when the boy's parents complained about receiving "hundreds of threatening emails and text messages" after the breakup. "The parents told police their son admitted he and the girl had taken naked photos of themselves while dating, sharing them with each other with their cell phones," according to the Daily Herald. "The parents said that after the breakup the girl's mother told the boy she'd tell his parents about the images of him and post them online unless the youngsters started seeing each other again." She also allegedly created an email account the kids could use unbeknownst to the boy's parents. A small but growing category of online-safety risk: parents. [Thanks to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children for pointing this story out.]

How teens use tech

Teenagers say they only use email when they're communicating with adults. To them, "real" email is a feature of a social-networking site. "To hear the teen panelists tell it … e-mail will be strictly the domain of business dealings," reports CNET's Stefanie Olsen, referring to panelists at this week's YPulse Mashup conference in San Francisco. They were Asheem Badshah, a teenaged president of Scriptovia.com, an essay-sharing site that launched this summer; Martina Butler, host of the [well-sponsored] teen podcast Emo Girl Talk; Catherine Cook, president of MyYearbook.com and soon-to-be freshman at Georgetown University; and Ashley Qualls, president of WhateverLife.com, creators of layouts and graphics for MySpace profiles. So how are they communicating? A whole lot by texting on cellphones. "In the last six to nine months, teens in the US have taken to text messaging in numbers that rival usage in Europe and Asia. According to market research firm JupiterResearch, 80% of teens with cell phones regularly use text messaging." Many teens also use multiple social sites ("Badshah said that to subscribe to only one social network means losing out on friendships with people who are active on other rival social networks"). [If a teen reads this, tell us if you agree/disagree with this or the article I link to here - sorry you have to use email (anne@netfamilynews.org)! ;-) But you're totally welcome to post in our forum, though: BlogSafety.com, soon to relaunch as ConnectSafely.org.]