AOL Wants You Back – Just Socially

A new AOL survey, conducted by The Nielsen Company, reveals the challenges of modern day parenting in a world with social networking. According to the survey, more than half of the children surveyed (54%) don’t personally know all of the friends accepted into their social network. While 76% of parents with kids on Facebook, claim to have “friended” their teens, 29% of teenagers are ready to “un-friend” their parents given the choice, and are twice as likely to want to “un-friend” mom versus dad.

In response to the dynamic safety and reputation management needs of today’s teenagers online, AOL today released a new product called Safe Social. This comprehensive tool provides parents a 360 degree view of their child’s social networking life, with an easy-to-read report card of overall social networking activity and identification of potential red flags. With Safe Social, which requires up-front consent from the child, parents gain access to their teen’s friends list and what their teen posts on sites like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. Parents may also opt to receive real-time alerts regarding potential predator relationships and indications of at-risk behaviors, such as posted references to alcohol use or even bullying and suicide.

How AOL SafeSocial Works

Dashboard Your child’s social networking activity, all in one place. Anything of concern is brought right to the top, so you don’t have to wade through pages of teenage ramblings. We look through the activity on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and other sites and present it in an easy-to-understand report that is updated regularly.

Alerts Know what you need to know. We scour the major social networks to find posts in which your kid has participated that may include inappropriate language or talk about drugs, sex, violence, alcohol and suicide.

Friends Who are your kids hanging out with online? We check your child’s online “friends” against more than 50 websites to find out more about them, and then present them all in one central place. We alert you when: Your child is “friended” by an adult A friend looks suspicious or if something just doesn’t seem quite right A friend has no other friends in common with your child

Photos See the photos they’ve uploaded, and the photos uploaded of them. We find all the pictures your child has posted on the connected social networks, as well as any uploaded by others on which your child has been “tagged” – a crucial step to helping kids manage their online reputation. You’ll see any newly posted photos the same day we do.

Activities The details are there if you need them. We show you a timeline of every status update or wall post from your child’s connected accounts, as well as every photo and every friend. This helps you dig into the details if you need to. But since you’ll already be alerted to anything of concern right at the top, many parents find that it is better to leave their kids some privacy and only access the Activities Engine™ when required.

 Safe Social works to protect teen users by alerting their parents when someone identified as an adult befriends them, or when the person has no or few other mutual friends with their child. Parents can keep track of the friends in one easy-to-read gallery. Roughly one-third of parents (33%) feel they are mostly on top of things, but worry they aren’t seeing everything, while another 18% feel that it is tricky and too time consuming to keep up. Many parents are not able to effectively vet their children’s friends, with 41% saying they know half or less than half of their children’s online friends.  Safe Social curbs this barrier with an up-front agreement with the teen user to allow parental access with a broader view. This arrangement is seamless to others, which 45% of children said they would prefer as compared to publicly being “friends” with a parent or parents who are able to post on their page.

How Much?

• $9.99 monthly

Bottom Line

Facebook is not a friendly place for non-adults.  Facebook needs to either raise the age limit to 18 or follow AOL’s exampe and create code that anyone who isn’t over 18, the legal age to sign a contract, will have a “watered down” Facebook.  I get uncomfortable knowing that anyone under 18 has the same access to things that I do.  

Since the US laws do not allow anyone under 18 to sign contracts, how does Facebook deal with “I agree with terms” and user action that constantly require consent.  Isn’t that a contract?  Isn’t that circumventing the law?  Isn’t Facebook accountable for their actions?

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Tags: Aol, Facebook, internet, news, social, tech