Social Networks and Kids

How young is too young?

CNN recently did a news story about social networking and kids. Here is the link to the story:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/11/02/kids.social.networks/index.html

Here is one segment of the article:

Sixty-one percent of those in the study, ages 12 to 17, said they use social-networking sites to send messages to friends, and 42 percent said they do so every day.

The data in the study was from 2006, so it’s not a stretch to assume those numbers are higher this year. Research on younger children is limited, but anecdotal evidence shows that many of them are also logging on.

Social networking is very powerful and we need to keep current on where the children are going online and how they are using social network sites. There are plenty of negatives that can occur and that are reported. But, there are positives and we can use these methods to reach out to kids.