Everyone has a story to tell about safe and respectful use of technology, and those who tell it via video could win a $10,000 prize from Internet security company Trend Micro.

The What’s Your Story? contest, now in its third year, will award one $10,000 grand prize and six other cash category prizes to individuals and schools that submit winning videos.

Videos should be short (30 seconds to 2 minutes) and, as you create your video, you’re encouraged to “keep in mind that these videos will be used to help educate kids and families and promoted by members of the judging panel.” In other words, you’re not just entering a contest, you’re creating a video that could be used by some of the leading non-profit Internet safety organizations and media companies (including Facebook, Twitter and Yahoo) to educate other Internet users all over the world.

Categories for this year’s contest are:

• Take action against bullying
• Keep a good rep online
• Be cell smart

Eligibility

The contest is open to residents of the U.S. and Canada (except Quebec) age 13 or older.  Youth are especially encouraged to submit a video and teachers can enter classroom video projects. The deadline is April 3rd, 2012. Contest rules are more details are here.

Judges this year will include representatives from several non-profit organizations and social media companies including ConnectSafely.org where I serve as co-director.

You can view all of last year’s winners here or just scroll down for last year’s grand prize winner.

Talk by Larry Magid, co-director of ConnectSafely.org at Russia’s Safer Internet Day – Moscow, February 6, 2012

It is a great pleasure to be here.  Even though I grew up during the cold war, I have always been an admirer of the Russian people and the many accomplishments of this great society. Ironically, the Cold War may have been an important reason why the United States is as prominent as it is in technology. Your successful launch of Sputnik in 1957 was the inspiration behind our own space program which led to many technological achievements in both countries.

Internet a Product of the cold war

Even the Internet was a byproduct of the cold war. Created by an agency of the United States military in the late 1960’s, it was designed as a decentralized network so that it would be invulnerable to a Soviet attack.

That decentralization is one of the reasons we enjoy such diversity and freedom. No one country owns the Internet and while Americans no longer have to worry about a Soviet attack, freedom loving people around the world do have to worry about those who seek to censor the Internet.

Regulation and freedom

I’ve only been in Russia a few days, but already I see some similarities between our two peoples.  Even though our histories are very different, we seem to have arrived at a similar place. We are both tech savvy nations that love our freedom and love our gadgets. There are entrepreneurs and tech enthusiasts among us both, as well as some who are a bit less exuberant about all the benefits of technology.  And, in both the U.S. and Russia there are those who err on the side of caution and those who like to – as we say in America – push the envelope.  And though we come from very different traditions, both of our nations have a bit of tension between government and industry.

It’s by no means unusual for elected officials to be concerned about young people’s use of technology and to draft legislation to help protect our youth.  But as you consider such legislation, remember that everything has its consequences. Sometimes the best meaning laws can actually do more harm than good. We know that in the United States because we have had a long history of regulation and industry self-regulation including some laws that have been overturned by our Supreme Court because they violated our precious First Amendment that guarantees all Americans freedom of speech.

Internet’s impact

The Internet has an enormous impact on all aspects of life including commerce, journalism and education and no single group has been more adaptive to technology than our youth. They have not just joined the technology revolution – they are leading it.

 Young entrepreneurs

Just last week Facebook announced that it would float shares on the public stock market and is expected to raise between $5 and 10 billion to become possibly a $100 billion company. It was founded 8 years ago by Mark Zuckerberg while he was still a teenager. He is now only 27. Soon there may be as many as  a thousand new millionaires in my community, bidding up the price of housing. Most of them are under 30.

Both Google and Yahoo were started by Stanford University students and even Apple – which is now the world’s most valuable company — was started by a young Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak when they were in their 20s

Innovation comes from freedom

It’s hard to know what sparks technological revolutions, but it’s no coincidence that they came from a country that values freedom of speech. Silicon Valley – where much of this innovation is taking place – is especially strong when it comes to freedom and tolerance.

Evolution of Internet Safety

I spent most of career as a technology journalist but around 1994, I turned my attention to Internet safety by writing the first popular Internet safety educational booklet on behalf of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC). There was no research at the time. I guess I can be forgiven for basing my advice on what I thought to be the situation. Now, thanks to a great deal of research, we can base advice on actual risks and a real understanding of how young people use technology and social media. For the past several years I have been a member of the board of directors of NCMEC which works very closely with industry in the United States to assure compliance with the law requiring them to report child sexual abuse issues and other online sexual crimes against children to the National Center which, in turn, sends the worst cases to law enforcement.

ConnectSafely

In 2006 I joined with Anne Collier, who you will hear from later, to form an NGO called ConnectSafely.org.  Our NGO works very closely with the leading youth risk experts in the United States and other countries, including the federally funded Crimes Against Children Research Center and the E.U. Kids Online researchers, who work out of the London School of Economics.

Three have been phases of Internet safety

1. During the 90’s and early 21 century we focused almost exclusively on pornography and predators
2. Later we focused on things kids do to harm themselves and each other
3. In 2009 we developed Online Safety 3.0 – to engage and empower youth and base our programs on actual research – not just guesses.

Education works

We now know that the vast majority of youth are using the Internet safely. The number of problems, relative to the number of users, is quite low. It’s certainly lower than problems associated with life in the physical world. For example we hear a lot of about cyberbullying, but physical bullying in school is actually more common.  We hear about predators, but 80% of all sex crimes against children involve adults and children who know each other in the real world. The perpetrators of these crimes could be teachers, clergy, police officers, doctors, child care workers who anyone else including, sadly the child’s parents or friends of their parents.  Cases where a child is exploited based on an initial contact via the Internet are rare and almost always involve the child taking an extreme risk. Still, one exploited child is one too many which is why we must develop programs that target at-risk youth.

Despite what some people say, research from the best scholars in the U.S. and Europe have found that predators very rarely find victims online. They find them the old fashioned way – in their local communities.

Child rights

It is popular to quote the U.N Convention on the Rights of the Child when we talk about protecting children, but we must not ignore article 13 which says “The child shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of the child’s choice.”

Child porn is a serious and special problem

It is important not to confuse child pornography or child abuse images with Internet safety. While the distribution of these terrible and illegal images may take place online, the crime always begins offline with an adult who has physical access to a child – often a child they know, and frequently their own children or children of family members.

The creation and distribution of child abuse images is a horrible crime, but it’s very rare for children to actually find these images unless they are being sent these images by someone they know or someone who is grooming them. It is important not to confuse child pornography – which is illegal in most countries including the U.S. and Russia, with adult sexually explicit material which, generally, is not prohibited by law.

Sexual exploitation is at an all-time low

While we talk about protecting children online it is important to know that during the very years that the Internet has grown, from 1992 to 2008, child sexual abuse in United States has decreased by 58%, according the Crimes Against Children Research Center.

Partnership

At this conference we will be discussing partnerships between industry, government and civil society, but there is one very important group that often doesn’t get to go to conferences and that is the hundreds of millions of young people who use the Internet. They MUST have a voice and they must have the freedom to use the Net to express themselves, and move us all forward into what we hope becomes truly the golden century of international cooperation.

There are problems and we are all aware of them: pornography, bullying, adults who would harm children, but we must not let these problems take our attention away from the power and potential of the Internet and we must not exaggerate the problems. As we will show in our workshops, the Internet is a reflection of life and simply amplifies issues that we have been dealing for centuries

Later today, Anne Collier, myself, Daniel Kent and other experts will discuss filtering, laws, digital literacy educational programs and other efforts to help ensure that all of our children are not just safe from bad things but engaged in productive and healthy use of technology.

Thank you very much.

This is one of Larry Magid’s panel presentations at Russia’s Safer Internet Day conference in Moscow on February 6th.  He also gave a plenary talk earlier in the day.

Pseudoscience sculpture by Mihail Chemiakin (Photo by Larry Magid)

There’s an amazing group of sculptures in a park near the Kremlin in Moscow, called “Children are victims of adult vices” by Mihail Chemiakin.

This particular sculpture is “pseudoscience,” which is relevant for the talks that I (along with my ConnectSafely.org co-director Anne Collier) will deliver this week at the Safer Internet Day forum here in Moscow. Some adults have perpetuated myths both about dangers to young people online and the way youth treat each other in social media. Panicking over cyberbullying, sexting, predation and other risks is a form of pseudoscience that hurts young people. That’s not to say that these risks don’t exist, but that kids are far more resilient that many of us give them credit for. To ignore the growing research about youth risk is, indeed, an example of of pseudoscience. Scroll down for links to articles about real science on youth risk.

The other vices depicted in sculpture are drug addiction, prostitution, theft, alcoholism, ignorance, indifference, violence, sadism, lack of memory, exploitation of child labor, poverty and war.  For more, see this on Wikipedia.

Mihail Chemiakin's "Children are victims of adult vices" taken by Lvova Anastasiya & downloaded from Wikipedia Commons

For more

Internet fact sheet from the Crimes against Children Research Center

Predator panic making a comeback

Let’s not create a cyberbullying panic

With new data we can stop the teen sexting panic

Why technopanics are bad (Anne Collier)

Why do we always sell the next generation short (Adam Thierer)

ConnectSafely.org, the non-profit organization where I serve as co-director along with Anne Collier, has just released A Parents Guide to Facebook (PDF), a free 36-page downloadable guide to help parents and their kids get the most from the world’s largest social networking service.

The all-new guide shows how to take advantage of the service’s safety features and privacy controls, while emphasizing the positive things that young people are doing on Facebook.

The guide covers:

• Configuring Facebook’s new timeline
• How to review your activity log
• Using “in-line privacy”
• Using Facebook’s “social reporting” tools to resolve problems
• How to protect your online reputation
• Safe use of Facebook mobile
• And much more

Click to read or print  A Parents Guide to Facebook

When Google launched Google+ in June, 2010, it was for adults only. Now it’s open to anyone 13 or older.  The reason Google kept teens off the service at first is not because the social network was ever about what we euphemistically call “adult content,” but because Google wanted to take extra time to get it right before opening the doors to people under 18.  After several months of testing, Google thinks it’s reached a good balance. In rolling out the teen welcome mat, Bradley Horowitz, Google’s Product VP for Google+ said, “We want to help teens build meaningful connections online. We also want to provide features that foster safety alongside self-expression. Today we’re doing both, for everyone who’s old enough for a Google Account (13+ in most countries).”

Before opening Google+ for teens, Google consulted with child safety and teen safety experts including ConnectSafely.org, a non-profit Internet safety organization where I serve as co-director along with Anne Collier.  And to help parents better understand Google+, Anne Collier and I wrote A Parents Guide to Google Plusand helped Google with its new Google+ Teen Safety Guide.

For the most part, teens’ experience on Google+ will be just like adults, but there are some special safeguards for users under 18. Google didn’t put any major breaks on teens — it’s giving them plenty of freedom to express themselves to their friends or even to the world, but it did make some of the default settings for teens more restrictive than for adults. If teens (or adults) decide to change them, they can, but how a service sets its defaults is very important. It’s a type of recommendation — the company’s way of saying “this is how we think most people should use our service,” and — besides — most people never get around to changing defaults.

Circular logic

Everyone on Google+ is encouraged to create circles where they group their friends and other contacts. You could have a circle of just family members, another circle of schoomates and another  circle of people on your soccer team. You can have as many circles as you want and you can call the circles whatever you want to call them. People in your circles are notified, but don’t know the name of the circle(s) you’ve put them in.  And it’s asyncronous. You can be one of my circles, but you don’t have to put me in any of yours. In that case, you’d see what I post to circles you’re in but I’d only see what you post to the public, unless you added me to one of your circles.

Circles work the same for teens as they do for adults, but there are some special safeguards consisting of warnings and different default settings.

Safeguards for teens

• If teens post something directed to extended circles or the public, they’ll get a warning reminding them that “when you share to your extended circles, people you haven’t added to your circles will be able to view your post and may be able to comment.”
• All  Google+ users can control “who can notify me.” For adults, the default is “anyone,” but for teens the default is people in their circles. Adults can make their settings more restrictive and teens can make theirs more open, but the default for teens is designed to limit who can contact them.
• By default, anyone can comment on an adult’s public posts,  but for teens it’s only people in their circles.
• There are also some differences in the profile defaults. Your profile is where others can see a bit about who you are and who you interact with on Google+.  By default, employment and Education can be seen by anyone (Public) if you’re an adult, but for teens, the default is “just your circles.”
• Adults’ “Relationship Status” can be seen by people in their extended circles, but only in “your circles” for teens.
• In the hang-out feature,  up to 10 people can have a video chat. For teens if  someone outside anyof their circles joins in, the teen is temporarily pulled out of the hangout and asked if they want to continue. It’ a way of pausing the action for a second and encouraging the teen to think about whether he or she wants to remain in this hangout.

Teens are temporarily pulled out of a video hangout if someone outside their circles enters

The precautions that Google put into place will help remind teens about safe and appropriate use of Google+ but, as my ConnectSafely co-director Anne Collier pointed out in a blog post, “Just as with most protections and any services on the social Web, these are not about control. Users choose to go with the defaults – or not.” And even services that have strict controls can’t always enforce them. “There’s always a workaround even for the strictest safeguards any parent or site might impose,” said Collier, “including software that disallows social networking sites altogether.”

Disclosure: Larry Magid serves as co-director of ConnectSafely.org which receives financial support from Google, Facebook and other social media companies.

by Larry Magid

Let’s be honest. Many children — especially post-pubescent boys — are interested in what we commonly call “porn.” You might not like the idea that some kids are looking at these images, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s a pretty common occurrence.

This column isn’t about young children or children who accidentally come across unwanted sexual material. Those are different issues. The question I want to explore is how a parent should react if they discover their growing child — typically 12 or older — is deliberately looking at sexually explicit material on the Internet.

Nothing new or unusual

First, recognize that there’s nothing new about teens looking at such material.

We didn’t have the Internet when I was 14, but that didn’t stop kids from getting their  hands on copies of Playboy. Porn has been around for centuries and we’re far from the first generation of parents who have had to deal with it.

There are a number of reasons why kids look at pornography.  For some, it’s to be “cool.” There are reported cases of relatively young children using porn to impress their friends, much as kids sometimes smoke to show their independence.

Sometimes it’s curiosity, but in many cases — especially for males past puberty, it’s for stimulation at times when no one else is around.

Interest in sex and voyeuristic behavior to satisfy sexual urges are completely normal. Whether the young person makes up images in his head, gets them from television shows, movies, magazines or images on the Internet, the process is much the same.

Engage but don’t overreact

The first answer is not to freak out. Take a deep breath and spend some time thinking about the situation before you do anything. If possible, talk it over with the child’s other parent before confronting the child.

Don’t overreact. How you respond to the situation can have more of an effect than the exposure itself, according to Richard Toft, a child psychologist in Palo Alto, California.

“Parents,” said Dr. Toft, “need to approach porn the same way they approach any issue about their child’s sexuality.  There are laws involved, there is responsibility involved, and there is a life long impact of everything they do whether they want to admit it or not.” Dr. Toft added, “Parents are going to do best if they do not consider porn isolated from sexuality.  They need to address their moral feelings about sex, and porn is part of that.  It is also best addressed ahead of time not after the fact.” He added, “A parent’s reaction can have a tremendous impact, and you could make it traumatic by ranting, raving and threatening reprisals.”‘

Porn and sexuality

Dr. Marty Klein, a Silicon Valley-based marriage counselor, psychotherapist, and sex therapist, said that “many parents are blissfully ignoring their kids’ sexuality. They don’t talk about sex with their children when they’re young and when they trip over their kid’s porn at age 14, they suddenly realize their kid is a sexual being. ” Finding that your kid is using porn, said Dr. Klein, “can be a teachable moment. It can be turned into a positive thing. It may be long overdue for a parent to have a few conversations about sex with their kid.” He added,” we don’t wait around for our kids to ask about taking care of their teeth. We teach them dental hygiene when they’re young. It’s the same with sex.”  Dr. Klein argues that “you can’t talk about porn without talking about your kid masturbating. One of the reason parents don’t want their kids looking at porn is because they’re uncomfortable with their kid masturbating.” Klein said that there is no evidence that masturbation is harmful or dangerous unless the child is doing it so much that it’s interfering with other activities.

Dr. Daniel Broughton, a pediatrician at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota who for 13 years served as chairman of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, says to be careful to distinguish the child’s behavior from the feelings that may be behind it.

“What the kid has done may be an issue, but what a kid is feeling or thinking is not the problem. You don’t say `You’re a bad kid for thinking this,’ even if you do feel that he has been a naughty kid for doing it.”

You don’t need a psychologist or a pediatrician to recognize how this can be an extremely embarrassing situation for you and your child. After all, you’re entering into the child’s private space. While having sex involves another person, viewing pornography often involves only the child and the screen.

Broughton cautions parents not to send their child to a psychologist or psychiatrist at the first sign of such exposure.

“You might want to seek professional advice yourself on how to deal with it, but that doesn’t mean you should seek professional care for your child,” he said.

Both Toft and Broughton feel it’s appropriate for a parent to talk with their child so the child knows how the parent feels about pornography and the child’s behavior. Again, both professionals caution parents not to make their child feel as if he is somehow abnormal or perverted.

Role models

Cordelia Anderson, a Minneapolis-based prevention consultant in the field of sexual health recommends parents counter the messages their kids may see when viewing porn. “Parents may want to be the main sexuality educator for their children rather than by omission having it be pornography.” She said that parents “should think about  the messages it contains about gender, equity and sex and sexuality” as well as the “role and expectation of being male or female in this culture, about respect for your partner and sex in the context of a caring respectful relationship, and what kinds of images and practices they want to shape their arousal.”

Putting it into context

It’s also important to put the activity into context. An occasional peek at pornography or use of pornography for sexual stimulation, according to Toft, is not as much of a mental health concern as are cases where children are obsessed with the material. If the child is looking at pornography for hours at a time, or is collecting it, then you may have a more serious problem that requires professional help.

When it could be more serious

Though it’s rare, there are cases where adults have used pornography as part of the grooming process to make the child more susceptible to sexual exploitation. It can also be a financial issue if the child uses a credit card to get access to paid sites.

Also, if any of the images are of people under 18, the child might be accessing illegal child pornography. If so, put an immediate end to it and destroy any copies that may be printed or stored on a computer or phone. Possession of child pornography is a serious crime that could lead to prosecution and being required to register as a sex offender. This is especially important if the images are of pre-pubescent children, but even if your child is looking at images of teens and even if you think it may be “age appropriate,” it may still be illegal. Minors can be prosecuted and the law is sometimes applied even when kids receive or send sexually explicit photos to other kids (so-called “sexting.”)

Consequences yet restraint

Broughton says parents need to dish out consequences for inappropriate behavior, but shouldn’t lash out with severe punishment the first time. “If the parents feel that the child has done something wrong, there needs to be a penalty, but it needs to be commensurate to the issue. The first time the penalty should be relatively mild like, `You can’t use the computer unless a parent is there for two days.’ As the offenses become more repeated, the consequences should become more severe.”

When talking with your child, consider bringing up some of the consequences of spending time on these types of sites. For one thing, the depictions on some Internet sites go far beyond pictures of naked people. There is often very graphic sex as well as a variety of divergent sexual practices that can be especially problematic for someone who has little or no sexual experience.

Violent vs. non-violent material

The type of material a child is looking at can have an impact on their behavior said according to a study published in the January/February 2011 issue of Aggressive Behavior. A research team led by Dr. Michele Ybarra found that “intentional exposure to violent x-rated material over time predicted an almost 6-fold increase in the odds of self-reported sexually aggressive behavior, whereas exposure to nonviolent x-rated material was not statistically significantly related.”

After reviewing empirical studies, Christopher Ferguson, Associate Professor of Psychology and Criminal Justice” at Texas A&M International University concluded, “Overall, pornography viewing effects on minors appears to be fairly minimum for most outcomes, particularly for “regular” non-violent porn. There appears to be little evidence overall that viewing non-violentpornography increases sexual aggression.  Even for violent pornography the evidence is inconsistent at best.” He added that “the research also indicates what is called ‘violent porn’ is actually very rare.”

There is a lot of concern about the type of porn that’s online compared to what was easily available in the past. Porn is more explicit and it sometimes depicts acts that fantasize behavior that appears to be hurtful. Dr.Klein said that parents can help kids distinguish between fantasy and reality when it comes to sexually explicit material. Parents should explain to children that people in porn films are “actors and actresses and that they’re not really hurting each other.”  He likened it to watching the 3 Stooges poke each other or kids playing with guns. “Just like some kids like to play with guns and would never hurt anyone, some adults like to play games with sex,  but wouldn’t really hurt each other.”

Blocking and monitoring porn

If you feel that your child needs some restraint beyond what you can accomplish through conversation or house rules,  you can put a filter on whatever devices the child uses. There are programs for computers and apps for smart phones that do a reasonably good job of blocking sexually explicit material without blocking appropriate sites.  These programs are not perfect and they are not for every child but they can help a child control his or her impulses. If you use such a program, it’s best to discuss it with your child so he knows why it’s there. You should also consider removing the software or lessening its restrictions as your child shows signs of self-control.

To prevent accidental exposure, consider configuring your search engine for “Safe search.” You can do that within Google, but as easier option is to use SafeKids.com Child Safe Search page that’s powered by Google. Yahoo also has a safe search setting as does Microsoft’s Bing.

Of course there are ways around filters (including using a different device — porn can be viewed on any Internet connected device including game consoles, phones, tablets and even an iPod Touch) and ultimately your child will reach an age where you have no ability to control what they do, so remember that the best filter isn’t the one that runs on a device, but the one that runs on the computer inside the child’s head.

Finally, recognize that conversations like this are part of parenting. Difficult as they are, they can ultimately be good for your children and your relationship with them.

 This article also appears on Forbes.com.

Here’s a shocker for some. By two important measures, teens are safer online now than they were before the advent of social media.

A new report, “Trends in Youth Internet Victimization: Findings From Three Youth Internet Safety Surveys 2000 –2010,” (PDF) from the Crimes against Children Research Center (CCRC) found a decline in 2010 of both unwanted sexual solicitations and unwanted exposure to pornography compared to studies conducted in 2005 and 2000. 95% of all teens ages 12-17 are now online and 80% of those online teens are users of social media sites

According to a 2011 report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, “95% of all teens ages 12-17 are now online and 80% of those online teens are users of social media sites.”

As I wrote in my CNET News blog, a 2010 survey of 1,500 youth between 12 and 17 found that 9% had received an unwanted sexual solicitation in the past year. This compares to 13% in 2005 and 19% in 2000. In all three studies, some of those unwanted sexual solicitations came from other youth and the vast majority of them were not “aggressive.” Only 3% of the youth in 2010 said that offline contact was attempted or made. Most youth did not find the solicitations to be frightening or disturbing. That’s actually a bit lower than the 4% who had aggressive solicitations in 2005 and identical to the 2000 figure.

Unwanted sexual solicitation and porn down from previous years. Click graphic to enlarge.

Small increase in online harassment

There was a small rise in the percentage of youth who experienced some type of online harassment during the 12 months preceding the survey. Eleven percent had experienced harassment in 2010 compared to 9% in 2005 and 6% in 2000.

Although sometimes used to indicate cyberbullying, harassment is not the same as bullying. The survey asked youth “did you ever feel worried or threatened because someone was bothering or harassing you online.” Bullying (cyber and otherwise) is defined by the Olweus Bullying Prevention program and most other experts as “aggressive behavior that involves unwanted, negative actions”along with “a pattern of behavior repeated over time” that “involves an imbalance of power or strength.”

Rise in social media

The mostly good news comes at a time when the majority of American youth are using social media, most notably Facebook. The first survey took place years before Facebook or MySpace, and the 2005 study before most teens were using Facebook (Facebook wasn’t open to high school students until September, 2005). Correlation doesn’t necessarily imply causation so I’m not suggesting that Facebook has necessary caused unwanted solicitation or pornography to decline. But it obviously hasn’t caused it to increase.

Could social networking be diverting kids from more dangerous sites?

I’m speculating, but I do wonder though whether a case could be made that social media has made kids safer and less prone to unwanted pornography. For one thing, kids are now spending time in sites like Facebook instead of chat rooms which were always the most problematic venue for unwanted solicitation. And, Facebook and most other social networking sites prohibit nudity and other sexually explicit content so, while kids are on Facebook they are very unlikely to stumble into pornography. Again, I don’t have data to support this but it sure seems likely.

The authors of the study made the same observation, pointing out that “youth have migrated from chat rooms to social networking sites over past several years. In social networking environments, youth may be confining more of their interactions to people they know, thus reducing online unwanted sexual comments or requests.”

Disclsoure: Larry Magid is co-director of ConnectSafely.org, a non-profit Internet safety organization that receives financial support from Facebook, Google, Tagged and other social media companies.

Excuse me for posting about a post. I know it seems strange but I added this FAQ over the weekend and it’s just now getting featured. Because of the way WordPress works it’s down in the stack so a bit harder to find. So, if you haven’t aready done so, please check out our new:

Online Safety FAQ