How social sites can help kids

These might look like a couple of those rare boy-bites-dog stories, but I think the news media are beginning to pick up on a story that was always there. First, the Safe School Ambassadors Program uses social-networking techniques to combat bullying. It IDs social influencers in San Francisco schools, meets with them, and tells them that with influence comes responsibility. The premise is that if a school's top student influencers say bullying is not cool, a large number of other students "will change their behavior because they will have to conform to a new norm," a program spokesperson told San Francisco's CBS 5. More than 450 schools have used the Safe Schools Ambassadors program since 2000, CBS 5 adds. The other article from McClatchy Newspapers, points out that there is a lot to be learned about our kids from their profiles and blogs if we have access to them (which usually requires open parent-child communication lines), and social-networking profiles can present "very public warning signs from troubled kids" to parents, mental-health-care professionals, educators, and researchers.