Facebook announced today that teenage users can now make their posts public on Facebook. Previously, the social network limited users between the ages of 13 and 17 to distributing posts to their extended network—i.e. friends and friends of friends. Teenage users also now have the option to turn on the "follow" setting for their accounts, letting public updates appear in news feeds.

In an apparent attempt to mitigate the impact, Facebook has set the default sharing setting for new teen accounts at "friends only," compared to the previous default of "friends of friends."

Read more here.

Six out of 10 teenagers say they have been asked for sexual images or videos, an NSPCC/ChildLine poll seen by the BBC's Newsnight programme suggests.

Of those polled, 40% said they had created a sexual image or video, and about a quarter said they had sent one to someone else by text.

The NSPCC's head, Peter Wanless, said "sexting" was getting much more common. Read the full article here.

'Remember in "The Dark Knight" when Batman turns all the mobile phones in Gotham City into one super-surveillance network that can show him what the populace is up to at any given moment? That basically exists already, only it's no masked vigilante behind it. It's Foursquare.'

Read more here.

'Students at Saltash School are busy practising their French speaking skills as their teacher, Ben Rowe, stands at the front of the classroom armed with a smartphone. He types a message into his mobile: "Good use of vocab". A moment later the classroom computer bleeps and his feedback appears on its screen.

It might sound like a roundabout way to praise students, but Rowe's message travels wider than the classroom wall.'

Read The Guardian article here.

'On the day of her birth, our daughter already had accounts at Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and even Github. And to this day, we've never posted any content.

All accounts are kept active but private. We also regularly scour the networks of our friends and family and remove any tags. Those who know us well understand and respect our "no posts about the kid" rule.

When we think she's mature enough (an important distinction from her being technically old enough), we'll hand her an envelope with her master password inside. She'll have the opportunity to start cashing in parts of her digital identity, and we'll ensure that she's making informed decisions about what's appropriate to reveal about herself, and to whom.' Read more.

Anne Collier of netfamilynews.org writes;

""Way back" in 2008 – at least a decade after "online safety" was starting to be seen as a subject that needed to be taught to children – I suggested that it was becoming obsolete. Now what I'm seeing is that it never really was a single stand-alone subject that could become obsolete. We'll look back on it as a risk-prevention placeholder that society created until our research-based understanding of the Internet and youth online practices replaced the myths and misinformation that circulated in the public discourse for far too long."

Read the full article here.