The last decade has seen the Internet becoming a more important resource in all types of different areas of life. From business to entertainment, the World Wide Web now rules above all else. But does this also mean that a generation of children are being raised online?

I have gone from spending a few hours a week on the Internet five years ago, to maybe six to eight hours a day currently. The biggest reason for that is my job being Internet based, but there is also the time I spend on social networks such as MySpace and Facebook, on Wikipedia finding out lots of useless information, and YouTube to see stupid, and sometimes newsworthy videos.

This current generation of children probably aren’t working online, which means they spend all of their time on the sites I previously mentioned, as well as various forums and discussion groups. But is that actually healthy? Particularly when it’s clear that a large percentage of kids have personal access to the Internet, with little or no monitoring done on what they see.
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Facebook, MySpace and other Web sites have unleashed a potent new phenomenon of social networking in cyberspace. But at the same time, a growing body of evidence is suggesting that traditional social networks play a surprisingly powerful and underrecognized role in influencing how people behave.

The latest research comes from Nicholas A. Christakis, a medical sociologist at the Harvard Medical School, and James H. Fowler, a political scientist at the University of California at San Diego. The pair reported last summer that obesity appeared to spread from one person to another through social networks, almost like a virus or a fad.

In a follow-up to that provocative research, the team has produced similar findings about another major health issue: smoking. In a study published last week in the New England Journal of Medicine, the team found that a person’s decision to kick the habit is strongly affected by whether other people in their social network quit — even people they do not know. And, surprisingly, entire networks of smokers appear to quit virtually simultaneously.
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If you were to guess how many children were involved in networking, your first reaction might be “few.” Well, if we expand our idea of networking (beyond suits and career fairs and business cards) to mean social networking, than your first reaction would be very wrong.

A BBC News story by Darren Waters cites a recent survey showing that almost half of children online use social networking sites. And, of course, that’s not all. A surprising number of youth (59%) use these sites to make new friends. While they are making all these friends, 43 percent say their parents set no rules for use of social networks.

As hard as it may be to understand the latest jargon, we might want to start paying attention to who might be the new “bff.”

Read the full article here.

His name was Josh Evans. He was 16 years old. And he was hot.

“Mom! Mom! Mom! Look at him!” Tina Meier recalls her daughter saying.

Josh had contacted Megan Meier through her MySpace page and wanted to be added as a friend.Yes, he’s cute, Tina Meier told her daughter. “Do you know who he is?”

“No, but look at him! He’s hot! Please, please, can I add him?”

Mom said yes. And for six weeks Megan and Josh - under Tina’s watchful eye - became acquainted in the virtual world of MySpace.

Josh said he was born in Florida and recently had moved to O’Fallon. He was homeschooled. He played the guitar and drums.

He was from a broken home: “when i was 7 my dad left me and my mom and my older brother and my newborn brother 3 boys god i know poor mom yeah she had such a hard time when we were younger finding work to pay for us after he loeft.”

As for 13-year-old Megan, of Dardenne Prairie, this is how she expressed who she was:

M is for Modern

E is for Enthusiastic

G is for Goofy

A is for Alluring

N is for Neglected.

She loved swimming, boating, fishing, dogs, rap music and boys. But her life had not always been easy, her mother says.
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