Recently one of the local newspapers covered some troubling news pertaining to local school children sharing videos on the Internet and via mobile phones of themselves and peers performing sexual acts. I for one have heard of such videos and have refused to view them but I’ve seen many Youtube videos of local children in school fighting and so on. This not only reflects badly on them later but on their schools and unfortunately even our country. With regards to the younger kids, Symantec reported that ‘sex’ and ‘porn’ were among the top 5 most searched terms by children in 2009. This proves even more that Children’s curiosity can often lead them into trouble especially online. So where do you as parents draw the line? How can you protect your child(ren) without pulling the plug and still allow them the opportunity to learn and to use the Internet? I will briefly answer these questions by explaining what children do online and the dangers they face as a consequence. Also, I will offer 5 tips that you can use to keep them safe on the Internet.

One of my friends (a different one from last week) who read that last post was curious about how much we will tell others about ourselves online if we were known to them as opposed to being anonymous. For instance, you giving personal information on Facebook where persons who are familiar with you make up your audience. One can appreciate that cyberspace is not one generic space as it consist of many different types of spaces, so it shouldn’t be surprising that our levels of self-disclosure vary across different online spaces. So the question posed for this week is why and in what ways is self-disclosure on Facebook different from telling others about ourselves in less ‘nonymous’ online spaces?

Been talking (being nosy) to one of my close friends about some personal issues (nothing serious) they were having and they were quite reluctant to tell me. However, as the conversation progressed they slipped and said they already discussed it with one of their online buddies who is from another country. I prodded and despite my excellent probing skills, they didn’t budge. I wondered to myself, “why tell a stranger and not me, their dear old trustworthy friend?” And that is how the idea for this post came about