Monitoring MySpacers

The hands-down best way to find out what our kids are up to on the social Web is to ask them about it. It can also help to supplement that discussion by going online *with* them to their favorite hangouts and – again, with them - going through their friends lists, candidly telling them you check in on their profiles or blogs occasionally, because they're public spaces anyone can see and it's a parent’s job to make sure they're not doing anything to harm themselves or others physically or in terms of future academic and employment prospects. Another way to monitor social networkers is with monitoring technology - sometimes purely for convenience (though it might be better for parent-child relations to be up front about using it), sometimes because a child seems to be at risk and is not communicating with a parent. Three kinds of monitoring-with-tech are now available (so far, mostly for MySpace users): 1) human monitoring that uses technology (SafeSpacers emails parents their reports); tech monitoring (e.g., BeNetSafe and myspaceWatch) that makes monitoring teens easier and more convenient than going to their pages oneself; and 3) hard-core key-logger-style monitoring that logs every keystroke of the person using a particular computer. For more on the first two (newer) types, please click to this week's issue of my newsletter.