Teen Community Safety Tips

Unless your teens are total strangers to the Internet, they know about web sites like myspace.com, facebook.com or xanga.com.

What's the allure of these and hundreds of other free online communities? Teens flock to them to socialize the same way they do to a school dance or local hangout. These sites also let teens create a personal web page and decorate them just like they adorn their bedroom walls or school lockers.

When teens join an online community such as myspace.com they create and post personal profiles that can include their photos, age, city, school, song clips or favorite books and movies. Then they invite their offline friends — or even people they don't know — to join their contact list or so-called friends list. Photos of these "friends" then appear on your kid's profile page, too.

Teens also interact within popular online communities by swapping messages with friends, posting diary-like blogs or creative writing, and sharing photos. Beyond their profiles, they can search through message boards and blogs about various topics like sports, relationships or music. Many teens are now even using online communities to organize around social or political issues. Some just like to show off their web design skills by customizing their profiles.

Despite the positives, though, a lot of dangers lurk in these communities, too: sexual predators, identity thieves and cyberbullies. Unfortunately, you can't always chaperone your teens to make sure they're safe online. But you can arm them with knowledge about the darker side of online communities so they can spot trouble and avoid it. Here's how.