I serve on the site's Safety Advisory Board so of course I have a bias, but where Facebook says (at the top of its new safety center), "We believe safety is a conversation and a shared responsibility among all of us," belief and bias really aren't at issue. You can see this is pure logic right? In today's social, user-produced media environment, safety and privacy are by definition a shared … [Read more...] about Facebook’s new Family Safety Center
Parenting
3 new products for monitoring online kids
Some really creative thinking has gone into kid online monitoring products lately, and the category is segmenting in interesting ways. More on that in a minute, but what they have in common, thankfully, is that at least the leaders in this space all seem to be acknowledging the importance of baking parent-child communication into product design and allowing parents to calibrate how much privacy … [Read more...] about 3 new products for monitoring online kids
How teens can use privacy settings on parents
Chances are, if you have teenagers at your house, you're friends with them on Facebook. The numbers are pretty amazing: 80% of US parents of teens use social network sites; of them 95% are in Facebook; and of those FB-using parents, 86% have friended their kids, according to a recent study. Friending can be very helpful – a casual way of keeping an eye on things (if we don't blow it and comment on … [Read more...] about How teens can use privacy settings on parents
Togetherville a great acquisition for Disney
Disney's smart to acquire Togetherville, which I called social-networking training wheels for families last spring, when the kids' social site launched. Why families and not just kids? Because kids under 13 hardly need training in online socializing – most start that at young ages, in online games and virtual worlds (like Disney's Club Penguin, which it acquired from a smart Canadian startup in … [Read more...] about Togetherville a great acquisition for Disney
The benefits of parenting with respect
When I read "6 parenting rules for raising a critical thinker" by parent, author and child advocate Marjie Knudsen – who I had the pleasure of meeting last fall at the International Bullying Prevention Association conference in Seattle – I loved the rules but at first thought the headline was a bit off, since there didn't seem to be anything there about how to raise critical thinkers. Then I took … [Read more...] about The benefits of parenting with respect