FORUM: Parents Find it Difficult to Keep up With Kids on Facebook

Parents are finding it increasingly difficult to keep up with their kids on social networking sites like Facebook, according to a recent survey.

A study of 800 parents by SocialShield -- an online monitoring company that parents can hire to track their child's activity on social networking sites -- revealed that more than half those surveyed find it “difficult to keep up with Facebook’s latest product features.”

In addition, one out of every 10 respondents reported that something “dangerous or very bad” happened to their children online.

Parents can feel overwhelmed by social networking sites for a number of reasons, according to Kenny Ossen, SocialShield's director of communications and broadcast media.

"The biggest problem is that they didn’t grow up in that world,'' Ossen said. “Parents grew up in the analog world and kids are living in the digital world.”

Ossen said he is on the web all day for his job, but his a 10-year-old son is just as savvy online.

"It’s the only subject he knows more than I do,'' Ossen said, adding that like many parents, he sometimes avoids talking about the web with his son.

"Parents are supposed to know better, but parents don’t know better ... so they avoid it,” he said.