I have a couple of reference links for you that might help provide some perspective concerning safety on the social Web - "Sex offenders on MySpace: Some context" and "Profile of a teen online victim." Research makes clear that the teens who are most at risk online are those who are at risk offline. The vast majority of teen social networkers are socializing with their friends at school, and if they are contacted somehow by people they don't know, the data shows most just delete or ignore the messages and get on with socializing. The messages are seen as spam for the most part. That doesn't mean risk doesn't exist, but there are lots of safeguards in place at MySpace and Facebook for those who aren't seeking it out. In the above, I'm referring to risk of sexual exploitation. As far as harassment from peers and/or cyberbullying, these behaviors affect - depending on what study you look at - anywhere from a third to three-quarters of teens (repeated, aggressive cyberbullying by peers at school probably much lower). If you go to this page in my NetFamilyNews site, you can search for "cyberbullying" in the search box and find lots of items pointing to research on the subject. Just a little more info to chew on. Hope it helps,
Anne
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Anne Collier
ConnectSafely co-director

Hi, Jayce123, pls let us know if u want to know anything about this site - just a forum and info site about safe use of the social Web. As for your Q, I hope others weigh in too.it's a pretty big question, I think. The age range you mention - 8-16 - is huge from a child dev't. perspective. Middle school, appx ages 11-14, is when kids start seriously wanting to use social technologies that aren't mostly games or virtual worlds. There's also a law in place - the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) - that has in practice created a line in the online world between children (up to age 12) and adolescents (13-17). So social-network sites have made their min. age 13 to be in compliance with the requirements of COPPA - irregardless of whether their services or content are developmentally appropriate. Maybe the start of an answer to your Q is to consider where, developmentally, children can handle whatever negative impacts the negative aspects of peer-to-peer behavior (e.g., bullying) and user-produced content can have on them. We need some psychologists in the discussion! Hope that's a start. Post, people! All best, Anne --
Anne Collier
ConnectSafely co-director