20 years ago teens spent allot of their time on the family phone or second phone line. Technology has changed but teens and pre-teens still like to communicate with their friends at an alarming rate.

Today we have:

Cell phones
Texting 
Email 
Chat rooms 
Social Network sites like Facebook, Myspace, Etc..
Video Sharing site like Youtube, Daily Motion, Metacafe, etc..
Blogging & Online diaries

These technologies can be useful but also waste allot of time and invite trouble. We hope to help you understand these technologies and help you navigate your children through them while keeping them safe.

Cell Phones have become ubiquitous. Just about everyone has one and children are no exception. You can still be in control of how they are used.

Texting seems to have replaced talking as far as teens are concerned and they don't use the same etiquette when texting as they would if talking to someone. Kids are using a shortcuts like LOL and BFF but also shortcuts that would make you blush.  

Email used to be downloaded to you computer and you could check it. Now anyone can go to the internet and create an online email account from MSN, Yahoo, Google, or hundreds of others.You may not even know that your child has an email account. These Webmail sites can be blocked by the right filter. (click here to learn more)

Chat rooms are being replaced by social networks for the most part but are still around. Teach your kids how to stay safe.

Social Networking sites are popping up everywhere now. The most popular is facebook. These sites allow kids to stay in contact with their friends share pictures, comments, belong to groups and so on. If your child is at an appropriate age and responsible you may allow them to create a page, but you will probably want to create one as well and get in their circle of friends. You may want to block these sites with a filter but more and more teens will have a friend create a facebook or myspace page for them so it may be a good idea to do it with them.

Video Sharing sites are very popular. Youtube gets more searches than Yahoo and thats astounding. These sites can be great resources to learn things. I even have some Youtube videos that talk about this site, but there are some raunchy videos out there that even kids are producing. These are another type of site that can be blocked all together. If you want to allow video sharing sites there are some filters built exclusively for Youtube. Check out these software filters. 

Blogging and Online Diaries are not as popular as the social networks but can be a place for children to share to much information about themselves. You may want to block these sites with a filter.