With the advent of fast growing and widespread use of innovative technologies the world is getting smaller. To make friends with a person in another continent or to play games with people of different ages and races is child’s play these days thanks to the introduction of a plethora of social networking sites. When we say child’s play we do literally mean child’s play and this cannot be good. A vast content of different variety is available on the internet that you do not want your kids to be exposed to at such a tender age. Fortunately, we have a Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act in place to curb the misuse of social networking sites by the innocent and curious little juveniles.
Although social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace are off limits to anyone below the age of 13 there are some who create a fake profile and lie about their age. This creates a bad impact overall on the society as we cannot really keep a track on who is talking to your little one and what information is he/she being exposed to. Besides there must be some other games in these sites that may not suitable for the kids. You cannot really blame the parents for being careless for children these days are smart enough to get them into believing that they are not into anything unruly.
To bring this situation under control and to help channelize innocent little kids into using something that doesn’t need any pretence or faking identities, a Palo-Alto, California based company have developed a social networking site especially fabricated for kids in the ages between 6-10 years. The founder and CEO, Mr. Mandeep Singh Dhillon calls this site an online neighborhood for both kids and their parents. It is known as Togetherville.com. Children get to make profiles with their true identities and just like any other networking site it has games, pre-screened YouTube videos and other applications that are specifically designed for kids of that age group.
Creating an account in this website is free of charge but it essential that the parents have a Facebook account because it is only through there that they can create a personal profile for their toddlers. What is good about this system is that parents are automatically on track with the friends that their kids make on Togetherville.com and have the power to accept or reject these friends. This is the finest way of a social networking approach for kids. Kids can develop their relations with their friends and classmates online and update each of them about their daily chores and activities. This site also has status updates but since kids can get gibberish while expected to write something in this given space they are provided with readymade statements which they can update now and then. These are known as quips. If at all a kid wants to quip his own thoughts they need to send them for approval to the team of togetherville.com.
Parents can easily communicate with their children online and send them virtual gifts. This paves way to a totally different level of parent-children bonding and by keeping up with the times you are only helping your child grow with the latest knowledge and trends. It ensures a much safer environment to your little ones and keeps you away from the trouble of interrogating the child on his/her online activities that you were unaware of.
Social Networking for my grand daughter!!