Today is Safer Internet Day. Who knew?

Well, most of Europe, for a start. Safer Internet Day is in its tenth year and is making a big splash in the US this year. It is organized by Insafe, a European network of Awareness Centers promoting safe...

The kids are fearless and parents are clueless.

Well, that's what I used to say about the vast differences between parents and their kids and the Internet. Research that we've launched today suggests that the picture is both more complex than that while also offering some reassurance that...

There has been much angst in the press lately about teenagers and the Internet. Having recently been in London for the United Kingdom Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS), I read breathless updates from the Daily Mail and their campaign against porn on the Internet. While...

Throughout much of the 2000s, we lived through what some have described as a techno-panic on the issue of online predators. Many a nightly news program led with scary images, stories and reports of dangerous pedophiles stalking neighborhoods having first tracked your kids through their online profiles and...

First we had revengeful dad Tommy Jordan, who in response to his teen daughter's offensive video posting on Facebook, created a video of his own to "teach her a lesson." After speaking directly to the camera (and to his daugher's followers), he turned the camera toward the laptop...

We are only just beginning to understand the impact the Internet and communications technology is having on the Arab world. That was just one of many conclusions drawn from a recent conference in Doha jointly hosted by ictQatar and the Family Online Safety Institute called, "Promoting Online Safety...

Tommy Jordan, the mad dad who shot his daughter's laptop, is right up there with Charlie who bit his brother's finger. They're both YouTube sensations and they both share an infantile sense of pleasure in biting back. Only thing is, Tommy's the adult here or, at...

It's not easy being a teen these days.

Apart from the usual adolescent issues of friends, homework, parents and just plain angst, kids have also got to navigate a whole new world of social networking with all the highs and lows that this can bring: cyberbullying, sexting, overuse, oversharing and...

In a recent New York Times Magazine article, my organization, the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI), was accurately referenced as a member of the Facebook Safety Advisory Board. This Board consists of five non-profit organizations who broadly work in the area of online safety. We meet...

Kids are loading up their backpacks and heading back to school. An increasing number are taking sophisticated digital devices with them.

iPhones are the most sought after and desired, followed by the many varieties of smart phones, iPads, iPods, digital cameras, laptops and old-fashioned cell phones. The reaction of...

What are we to make of the rather official sounding "National Survey of American Attitudes on Substance Abuse XVI" from The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA)? That Facebook causes kids to drink? That Twitter will drive your teens to smoke dope? That watching Jersey Shore...

Who could possibly be against protecting kids on the Internet? In particular, kids' privacy should be protected and parents should be given the right to delete stuff their errant teens have mistakenly posted about themselves. Minors shouldn't be tracked online and voracious cookies should stop sucking up the virtual bread...

In the beginning, the Internet was for porn.

Back in the early days of the wild, wild web, around 1995, the biggest concern of parents and policy makers was the easy access to adult content by kids. The highly flawed Rimm study of that year...

The new movie Trust is not easy to watch, particularly if, like me, you have a hyper-texting teenage daughter who is navigating the shark-infested waters of her freshman year at high school. I mostly watched it through my fingers at a recent preview attended by the director, David...

Turns out the young Barack Obama was teased and taunted for his jug ears and funny name. And, according to his remarks at the White House Conference on Bullying Prevention, he didn't reach adulthood unscathed. It was a telling admission by the leader of the free world that...

What has unfolded first in Tunisia and now in Egypt is an early harbinger of a new kind of web-based activism and people-centric leadership, in a part of the world hungry for something other than states of emergency and one-party rule. While the role of social networking sites such as...

What has unfolded first in Tunisia and now in Egypt is an early harbinger of a new kind of web-based activism and people-centric leadership, in a part of the world hungry for something other than states of emergency and one-party rule. While the role of social networking sites such as...

I have a confession to make.

I actively encourage my teenage daughter to watch television. Not Jersey Shore or Sixteen and Pregnant or anything with a Kardashian. On these long, dark winter evenings, my wife and I call, plead or gently coerce our fourteen year-old to sit and watch Glee...

I was standing in line at Starbucks when I felt it. That familiar vibration that alerts me that a new e-mail has arrived on my iPhone. Without thinking, I reached into my front, left trouser pocket to retrieve it. Only problem was, there was no phone there -- I had...

The suicide of Rutgers University student Tyler Clementi and the extensive reporting of the circumstances of his death reveal a complex web of issues that challenges us all.

This tragic story involves an invasion of privacy, a form of live sexting, cyberbullying and an insidious form of...