According to a clinical report published in 2011, the emotional development of this generation of kids is taking place over the internet in social media websites and mobile phones. This particular report will note that the results of a 2009 pool conducted by Common Sense Media found that half of all teens will connect to a social networking website almost everyday at least once per day. Having knowledge about what your children are doing on such websites become quite important, therefore, you need to understand their development.

1. Try to talk to your children. You may your kids about the names of their social networking websites. Talk to them about the risks of the distribution of private info as well as the exploitation of children by various predators over the internet.

2. Establish certain ground rules for using social media websites. Try to make it a rule that your children offer you with their usernames or passwords if they want to be allowed to take part to such websites. While privacy concerns are quite essential, the risks of predation or bullying are often more important.

3. Log into your children`s social networking account using his username and password. Take a look through his entire list of contacts as well as through the exchange of his message. Try to find out who your kid will talk to and what the subjects of those conversations are.

4. You may also choose to use a monitoring software to track your children`s use of social media websites. Again, the invasion of your kids` privacy will often be outweighed by protection concerns. Telling your children beforehand that you will use the software will allow them to protect their privacy.

5. If you may think logging into your children`s social networking accounts or making usage of monitoring software isn`t warranted, you may also set up your very own social media accounts and ask your children to join. Once you will be connected on the same social networking website, you will be able to explore some or even all of the activity of your children, unless such task will be prevented by his own privacy settings.

6. The Children`s Online Privacy Protection Act will prohibit sites from gathering info from kids who are less than thirteen years old. The consent of his parents will be required for a child who is under thirteen years old to set up a social networking account and you will have the legal right to review that particular social media account.