What is Your Teen Doing Online Tonight?

Parents, Do You Know What Your Teen is Doing Online Tonight? One of the Biggest Threats to Teens Today is "cyberbullying".
Is Your Teen Involved? In a report first published on Feb 10, 2009, it was reported that Teenagers spend an average of 31 hours a week online and nearly two hours a week looking at pornography, according to a study. (Emphasis mine throughout.) They spend some three and a half hours communicating with friends on MSN, and around two hours on YouTube and in chat rooms. Just over an hour is devoted to looking up cosmetic surgery procedures such as how to enlarge breasts and get collagen implants, an hour and a half is spent on family planning and pregnancy websites and one hour 35 minutes is spent investigating diets and weight loss.

One in four teenagers of the 1,000 polled said they regularly spoke to strangers online but thought it harmless, and one in three admitted trying to hide what they were looking at if a parent entered the room.

What wasn't reported in this study was that 42% of all teens also report having been "cyberbullied" while online.
Cyberbullying includes threatening emails, harassing emails, extortion, emailing or texting sexually explicit text, photos or videos, and applying peer pressure to involve teens in illegal activities. Fifty per cent of cyberbullying lasted on average 2-4 days, while approximately 30 percent lasted a week or longer.

Over 41 percent of the time cyberbullying took place with instant messaging, chat rooms and blogs (MySpace, Xanga, Facebook, Bebo, etc).

In addition, 35 percent reported that e-mail was used to cyberbully them The cyberbullying including being threatened or harassed.

being lied about, teased or called names, usually more than once.

The question that arises is if 42% have reported being cyberbullied, what is the REAL figure? Many teens will not report it out of fear of more reprisals from the bullies, or fear their parents will remove their online or cell phone privileges.

But the real threat of cyberbullying is where it may lead.

In some cases, teens have been driven to follow through, and actually commit suicide because of cyberbullying.
A recent report from CBS news states that a 17-year old teen in West Islip.

took here own life after being constantly cyberbullied.

Not only was she cyberbullied to the extent that she took her own life, the cyberbullying continued even AFTER she died! This is just one instance. Go online and Google "cyberbullying" and as of this date, you will find over 125,000 different posting about this threat! The problem with most teens is they think they are capable of handling things for themselves. They don't want Mom or Dad "interfering" with their lives.

But isn't this is an instance where Mom or Dad SHOULD be involved? How about it, Moms and Dads? Do you KNOW what your kids are doing on line tonight? Are you monitoring their internet activity? Have you ever read any of their emails? Have you ever looked at their pages on MySpace or Facebook? Do you even know if they have pages up there? I'm not advocating standing over them every minute they're online, but at least be aware of what's going on! You should know who their online friends are, what chat rooms they visit, what sites they look at.
, what kind of email they receive.

As long as they are under your roof, and you are supporting them, you have the right to know. In fact, you SHOULD know! They may not like it, but it's really for their own good. Please take this seriously! Do you KNOW what your teen is doing online tonight?