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For the past two years Blumenthal and other states' attorneys general have negotiated with both Facebook and MySpace to implement more than 60 new safety measures to protect children from online predators and from gaining access to inappropriate content, like pornography.

Under the agreement with Facebook, its officials have agreed to prominently display safety tips, and to require users under the age of 18 to affirm that they have read the tips. Users over 18 can no longer search for under-18 users, and Facebook officials will automatically be notified when someone under 18 is in danger of providing personal information to an adult user.

Parents will also be provided with tools to remove a child's profile from the site. Inappro­priate images and content will be removed, and ads for age-restricted products, like alcohol and tobacco, will be limited to users old enough to purchase those items. Most significantly, Facebook agreed to diligently search for and remove profiles of registered sex offenders, and it will "in­crease efforts to remove groups for incest, pedophilia, cyber-bullying and other violations of the site's terms of service and expel from the site individual violators of those terms."

In a move aimed at cracking down on cyerbullying, Texas lawmakers passed a new bill that makes it a crime to impersonate people online. The new "online harassment" statute makes it a felony to create phony profiles on social networking sites with the intent to "harm, defraud, intimidate, or threaten" others. The statute defines commercial social networking sites broadly, saying they include any sites that allow people to register to communicate with others or create Web pages or profiles. (Email programs and message boards are excluded from the definition.)

Remember that nothing is temporary online. The virtual world is full of opportunities to interact and share with people around the world. It's also a place where nothing is temporary and there are no "take-backs." A lot of what you do and say online can be retrieved online even if you delete it — and it's a breeze for others to copy, save, and forward your information.

Mark your profiles as private. Anyone who accesses your profile on a social networking site can copy or screen-capture information and photos that you may not want the world to see. Don't rely on the site's default settings. Read each site's instructions or guidelines to make sure you're doing everything you can to keep your material private.

Safeguard your passwords and change them frequently. If someone logs on to a site and pretends to be you, they can trash your identity. Pick passwords that no one will guess (don't use your favorite band or your dog's birthday; try thinking of two utterly random nouns and mixing in a random number), and change them often. Never share them with anyone other than your parents or a trusted adult. Not even your best friend, boyfriend, or girlfriend should know your private passwords!

For example, miniDV cameras are not only among the new tools of self-expression, but the very act of creating personal videos with friends and creating events and key themes to shoot have become key aspects of entertainment in and of itself. To this generation, playing music via your cell phone, and movies and TV shows via your iPod are a given. Emailing is considered too old-school by many, whereas texting is outpacing cell phone calls. These things also go hand-in-hand with changes in online shopping patterns, top website preferences, communication and blogging patterns, and new habits for using social networks—not to mention the tremendous changes in preferred social networks and profile page usage patterns in general. These things are changing the paradigm of how the businesses of entertainment, communication, retail, marketing, advertising, and branding have been done in the past.

Unfortunately, as more companies pour big money into expanding their new media marketing components, as many people have discovered, the Field of Dreams theory (“if we build it, they will come”) certainly doesn’t apply when it comes to reaching savvy youth today. Popping up a site (or social network for that matter) no matter how cool it is means nothing if you can’t reach the market it’s intended for. This Report, therefore, also includes a great deal about how young people find out about new websites, communicate with others, and other forms of grassroots networking.

Overall, the Digital Lifestyle Youth Culture Profile Report 2008 not only reveals traits by target demographics, but also the growing generation gap occurring even within this generation.

Mathew Firsht brought the landmark libel action after coming across a Facebook group titled “Has Mathew Firsht lied to you?” as well as a profile containing false claims about his sexuality, religion and political views.

The damages awarded on Thursday by the High Court, as well as the record payout given to Max Mosley, the motorsports chief accused of indulging in a Nazi-themed orgy, will serve as a stark warning to old and new media alike, experts said.

Users who think of the site as a harmless way to catch up with friends still do not appreciate the risks of posting jokes or other potentially embarrassing details about friends and colleagues, experts said

About a quarter of the colleges and universities polled in a recent survey by the National Association for College Admissions Counseling (NACAC) said their admissions officers research prospective students' social-networking profiles before extending admission or scholarships. That means a Facebook picture from a weekend party might cost a student a spot on a premier campus.

Many of the most egregious acts of cyberbullying do not take place during school hours or on school networks, a situation that presents a dilemma for public school administrators: If they punish a student for off-campus behavior, they could get hit with a freedom of speech suit.  If they do nothing, students may continue to suffer and school officials theoretically could get hit with failure to act litigation. For school administrators, it appears to be an unfortunate “catch-22.” For lawyers, it’s a “perfect storm,” pitting freedom of speech advocates against the victims of cyberbullying and schools that try to intervene. There are no easy answers in this arena, few laws, and no well-established precedents that specifically deal with cyberbullying.

“School administrators can intervene in cyberbullying incidents, even if the incidents do not take place on school grounds, if they can demonstrate that the electronic speech resulted in a substantial disruption to the educational environment.”

These cases illustrate not only a lack of precedent on cyberbullying cases, but also a dilemma for school administrators on how to handle cyberbullying.  “There are few laws that address how to handle cyberbullying, and many schools don’t have an internal policy to deal with cyberbullying that takes place off-campus,” offers Deutchman.  “It may take an unfortunate and tragic event on school property to get more schools to consider tackling electronic behavior that originates off campus.  It’s only a matter of time before a cyberbully, or the victim of cyberbullying, uses deadly force during school hours.”

One in 10 of these preteenagers has responded to and chatted online with strangers, according to the Tween Internet Safety Survey, sponsored by Cox Communications and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

90 percent of American kids have used the Internet by age 9 and more than a third of 11- and 12-year-olds have a profile on social-network sites such as MySpace and Facebook.

Of the tweens with social-network profiles, 61 percent post personal photos online, 48 percent admit to posting a fake age online and 51 percent have received messages from people they didn't know.