Soical Networking: Could this be the answer?
Having delved into the issue of soical networking on a previous post, I decided to dig a little deeper. What I stumbled across may just be the answer for anxious parents, who are concerned about their young children accessing social networking sites, such as Bebo and Myspace.
Entitled the ‘Social Networking Weblog’, this innovative blog informs parents of a social networking site ideal for children aged between seven and 14, who want to expres their creativity and personalities online, but who are still too youg to enter the mainstream social networking sites.
Jeanette Symons, the founder of this site and also a mother herself, wanted to create a safe environment for her son to access the Internet and interact with children of a similar age with similar interests.
The site, named imbee.com, contains a large quantity of the same features as the likes of Bebo or Myspace. It allows it’s users to contribute blogs, pictures, audio and video to their personal accounts in order to fully simulate a fully functioning social networking site.
According to the ‘Social Networking Weblog’ parents are in fact the ones pulling the strings.
“Before kids can join imbee.com they must get permission from their parents. Parents will have to approve their account through email and can set up blocks on certain content if they don’t want their kids doing or seeing something on the site for some reason. Daily reports are sent to parents whenever there is activity on the site so you’ll always know what your kids are up to.” [Social Networking Weblog, 2008].
