ethics

Not just because of copyright theft or cut-and-paste plagiarism, but also because of cyberbullying and the self-protective aspect of ethics that really has come into play on the social web.

fear is bad.

tap their expertise and ask them what they're doing online,

It's really hard to control what our kids are doing online.

help them develop their own critical thinking

you check and make sure the person you're sending the text message is really the person you wanted to send it to, instead of mistyping it and have something end up in the wrong hands

We teach them to use emoticons: little smilies or something else to let people know they're kidding, because no one can see your expression online.

Apply common sense

Things we already know -- don't talk to strangers; don't tell secrets to strangers; don't take candy from strangers -- ... all of these things apply exactly online. If I can get parents to step back and stop being afraid of the technology they can keep the kids safe. They don't need a class on this stuff. They just need to stop panicking, talk to their kids, and be in charge.

[In the 1950s, the psychologist] Erik Erikson called adolescence a time of "identity consolidation," and so what teens are doing is going around and trying on these different identities. ... So in a way the social networking sites are this digital representation of what we think of as adolescence. ...

migrated to Facebook ... do so out of concerns about privacy,

They need to know how to keep themselves safe online, they need to think about the information that they're putting out there, and they need to be able to have discussions with their parents about it. The most well-rounded teens I've talked to have said, "Oh yeah, my parents have seen my MySpace site, and they're fine. They don't check it or anything, but I've showed it to them." ... They have the privacy to put what they want to put on their site, but they're okay enough with what they're putting on the site for the parents to look at it. And I think that their parents do need to be involved in that sense.

learn from your kids. You need to ask them why they're doing this, why it's important, and you need to ask questions. You need to ask moral questions -- have you thought about this? What would happen if this? What about this situation? -- and go through these situations, ... giving examples, learning from your experience to help them, but not by force.

good parenting has immunized kids against a certain amount of this problem. ...

our research shows that giving out personal information and having social networking Web site [accounts] do not put kids at risk. ... It's really what they do when they get a solicitation or they have a contact with somebody who begins to propose some of these things.