•         These virtual communities allow users to establish personal profiles, share photos, post their favorite music clips, create online journals, and correspond with others

 

•         A study commissioned by Cox Communications and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children found that 61% of 13 to 17 year olds have a personal profile on these sites and 14% have actually met face to face with a person they had known only through the Internet

 

•         Favorite sites for this type of networking are

•         My Space

•         Facebook

•         Xanga

•         Bebo

•         Friendster

•         Spin the Bottle

•         For a complete list of social networking sites visit

  

•         Do you know if your child has a page and what information is on the page?

•         The sense of you can’t see me, I can’t see you 

 

•         “At risk” students can connect with other “at risk” students to discuss information about topics just as suicide, hate groups…

 

 •         Many of the sites can be viewed by ANYONE

 

•         New opportunities for self expression and friendship building

 

•         Can build a student’s self confidence

  

•         Students learn the importance of appropriate communication

 

•         Builds networking skills

 

•         Tech-savy students can be very creative!  Some pages tell about their friends or family.  Some pages play their favorite music.  You might learn something you didn’t know about your student

 

•         Never post a last name, phone number, e-mail address or other information for strangers to be able to identify or use for contact

 

•         Use privacy controls and set the page to private

 

•         Make sure pictures are appropriate

 

•         Limit the friend list to “real friends”

 

•         Keep in mind colleges, employers, and other organizations are searching these pages for information about potential students or employees

 

•         Many times information deleted never really goes away.  www.archive.org has a feature called “wayback machine” where you can enter a web address and look at the page since the time it was created through all of its changes