Mom~E~Centric

Go read the introduction to this post, SafeSocial

These days, your teens’ “friends” aren’t just the kids hanging out in your kitchen and family room, they’re hundreds of contacts on their “friend” and “buddy” lists. More than 50 million teens (ages 13 to 17) are online worldwide and the average number of “friends” is 130. For many teens, these numbers are even higher. It’s not unusual to have more than 500 “friends” and more than 1,000 profile photos.

So, how can you realistically keep up with your child’s vast circle of “friends” and ongoing status and photo updates?

1. Become a “Friend”

For starters, you can become your child’s online. They’ll need to accept your friend request. This can be easier said than done. In some cases, you may get push back. It’s your call how strongly you press.

There are more private alternatives. A new product called SafeSocial lets you privately see everything you would as a “friend” and even more. Many kids prefer this route. Remember, you’re not “spying” on them; you’re simply doing your job as an informed and involved parent.

2. Curb the Comments

If your child is reluctant to accept you publicly as a “friend,” be sure not to push your luck by excessively commenting on their page once you are granted access. Grandparents can be over-commenting culprits, too. Often teens find this “embarrassing” and it may even lead to having them “un-friend” you. It happens all the time.

3. Get a Report Card

The new parenting tool SafeSocial offers a time-efficient and thorough way to keep tabs on your children’s social networking without being too intrusive. It delivers an easy-to-read report card providing a 360 degree view of their overall social networking— what they’re saying and doing and who their friends are.

This answers one of the biggest issues facing parents all over the country—feeling like you need to spend hours each week monitoring your child’s online activity and still not really being sure if you’re seeing everything (they can filter your view) or what you might be missing (what’s happening on their friends’ pages).

4. Watch the Friends

All friends are not created equal. Some your children may know well, some they may barely know at all. You can get a good feel for their entire list via SafeSocial’s Friend Engine, which takes an extensive look at your kids’ friends and checks them against more than 50 databases to see if they may not be who they say they are. You’ll be alerted when an adult becomes a friend of your child, when someone looks suspicious or has no or few other mutual friends with your child.

5. Loaded Language and Photos

Specific words that may come up in strings of conversation— sex, drugs, alcohol, suicide and so on and suggestive or violent language will be flagged, so you can hone in on the suspect dialog versus reading every post. This helps prevent missing something inadvertently.

You can even opt to be immediately notified via an email alert. This piece could prove priceless in protecting your children’s safety and managing their reputations.

While every conversation and image is archived, you can adjust the settings to simply view those that are called out. This lets you give kids more privacy as they mature. You will also see all photos, including those other people post of your child. Young people tend to push the envelope with photos and videos, so checking out this section of the report card is critical.

Overall, social networking is an integral part of many teenage lives and an opportunity for your kids to learn to express themselves in a creative and responsible fashion. It’s too big a trend to ignore. You can embrace it with these new tools on your side. For more information, visit www.safesocial.com,  www.safety.aol.com and www.reginalewis.com.

There’s tons more so stay tuned..

We all know the dangers are out there, but do we all realize at what a young age the problems can occur?

Just check out the general idea first

SafeSocial, a new AOL product that launches today, can help you protect your children, even if you aren’t a social media expert. SafeSocial helps you:

· Find out where your child has online accounts

· Know who your child is “friends” with online

· Get notified if your child is in a conversation about violence, suicide or drugs

· See photos your child has posted online, and others’ photos in which your child has been tagged

Another benefit? You can monitor all this activity without being a “helicopter parent.” Your child will have to agree to be monitored, but you won’t need to connect with them on the social media accounts, or hover over their shoulders in person.

Check out a 30 day free trial of SafeSocial

Check out the Guest post by Regina Lewis too…

For those of you who know me, you know that I am always focused on good safety habits.  When we owned the daycare, we put one of the indoor exit only locks on the door so people couldn’t not come inside unattended.  I mean business when I say, it’s important stuff to keep under contrl.

For those of you who were at Disney with me, you probably saw me handing out arm bands to put your information on and then put it on your child “Just in case”.  Luckily that trip, none of the people in my group had a “just in case”.

If you’ve known me longer than that, you know I was kidnapped when I was four.  Yea, now I have your attention uh?

I was given the opportunity to try out a website that’s making huge strides to provide our children with a safe environment.  And, to provide our kids the freedom that we were afforded as children.  Surely you remember playing outside with buddies til talk and then being called home for dinner.  Those days are gone.  Safety has to be your number one concern.

So, I checked out Our Child Safe thanks to the folks that help get the sited off the ground.  As you can see, there’s loads of information.  And, once I Registered, I was able to put in as much or as little as I wanted about my children, myself and an other adults besides their father that might be with them on a regular basis.  Hair color, eye color, allergies, behavioral disorders, birth marks, nicknames that only your kid would know as a safety net and more.

I was able to put in an up close facial, a profile and a full length photo of the kids.  Their friends, phone numbers of everyone you can think of, you can get it there.  The final deal is this, look at that ticker at the top, kids headed to the Emergency Room?  Look how many Amber Alerts have been issued in the last 24 hours?  That could be you out there looking, do what you can to make sure it’s not you and what you can do to help those less fortunate.

Honestly, only a few years ago (about 7 to be exact), I had no clue that just picking out a car seat would cause such stress.  We were expecting our first child and we own one automobile..a sports car.  We tried car seat after car seat and there was just no way to get them installed correctly.  Then, came the purchasing of pool noodles to help balance, rolling of towels and finally, we gave up, went back to the store and found another car seat.

By the time we were waiting on our second child, we were being introduced to the LATCH method of installing car seats and keeping our children safer.  We had long since said good bye to the sports car and we were in an automobile where we could employ the LATCH system. 

And, so, our studies began.  And, if you are just starting to put the study out on this, read ahead…you will probably be more than just remotely shocked…especially if this is your first car seat purchase.

The information comes from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Ad Council. 

And, I included that information because there are so many who don’t understand social media and Twitter specifically that I thought you should know the credibility of the sources.  First of all, an actual safety expert mans the @ChildSeatSafety account on Twitter, and they will continue to answer any questions that parents have about child passenger safety.  This is such a unique resource from a government agency!

NHTSA has a Facebook page at http://facebook.com/childpassengersafety where parents can learn about everything from LATCH to locating inspection offices.  And, I can’t recommend enough how important it is to find an expert to help you make sure your seat is installed correctly.  When we were traveling once, we rented a car but had taken our own car seats.  We were delayed in leaving the car rental office while they called in an expert who manned several of the businesses.  We had to have him installed our seats although we had done it at home many times.  That’s customer service people!

The Ad Council and the NHTSA have created a site with all the resources parents need to keep their smallest passengers safe: http://childcarsafety.adcouncil.org/   Find your local inspection station, watch instructional videos, and even take a fun quiz!

So take it and run with it and like I said, if this is your first car seat purchase and you are worried about your bundle of joy, this is great information to get your rolling.