I’m sure many parents can relate to this scenario: You’re browsing the web and you happen upon a saved site, or maybe check your history. And there it is – a porn link that you didn’t access. What do you do? At what age do you think you have to start worrying about this?

Well, according to a new study, it’s a lot earlier than you think. Apparently, kids are starting to look at porn by the time they reach the age of six. Yes, six.

The study comes from internet security and antivirus software provider Bitdefender, who released the results to USA Today. Bitdefender used data compiled from its various parental controls services alongside a survey of over 19,000 parents worldwide.

The survey found that kids start watching porn as early as 6, and are “flirting” on the internet by the ripe old age of 8.

Social media use is also starting earlier – 17% of kids had an account on some social networking site by the age of 10 and 25% had one by the age of 12.

“Kids nowadays are acting like young adults online — just give them an Internet-connected device, and they will find a way to things parents would like to ban forever,” says Bitdefender Chief Security Strategist Catalin Cosoi.

Of course, parents are the key. Both in limiting what young kids see on the internet, as well as having important conversations about both the good and the bad that exists on the web.

And it looks that those conversations need to start happening early. Very early.

These are examples of things that you can do that involve both your children and Facebook. Now here’s an example of something you can’t do.

An Oklahoma woman has been arrested on human trafficking charges after she attempted to sell her children on Facebook.

Sallisaw’s Misty Van Horn, 22, was taken in after it was discovered that she had been in negotiations with an Arkansas woman to sell her 10-month-old daughter for $1,000.

According to the report, one of the Facebook messages read,

“Just come to Sallisaw, it’s only 30 minutes away and I’ll give you all of her stuff and let y’all have her forever for $1,000.”

Apparently, she even offered her other child, aged 2, as part of a package deal. The asking price for both kids? $4,000.

Police says that they think Van Horn was trying to sell her kids in order to generate enough cash to post her boyfriend’s bond, who is currently in jail on an unknown charge. As of now, Van Horn is sitting in jail with her own $40,000 bond.

[Oklahoman via The Daily Dot]

Parents of children who attend one of the many schools in the Chicago Public Schools system were inadvertently directed to a soft-core adult site, after the school system sent out a mass email containing one slightly altered link.

The point of the email was to notify parents that CPS was raising their standards when it comes to the Illinois Standards Achievement Test, or ISAT. The new standards for the ISAT are being implemented by the Illinois State Board of Education, or ISBE.

A link at the conclusion of the email wanted to direct parents to the ISBE site more more information. Instead, the addition of one extra letter wound up directing parents to ISBEL.com, which happens to be a “private invite only community” with the goal of “enriching the modern woman’s sex life and sensuality.”

Luckily (or unluckily, depending on who you ask), the site’s home page only features an artistic photo of an open Kama Sutra book, placed on a bed. No real hardcore porn stuff or anything.

But of course, CPS had to make a public apology.

“As soon as it was brought to our attention, we sent out an updated letter with a corrected link and apologized for any inconvenience it may have caused,” said a spokeswoman for the Chicago Public Schools system.

Let’s just see how many parents come out and say they were scarred by CPS’ carelessness. Maybe their kids even saw the landing page. THE CHILDREN! THINK OF THE CHILDREN!

[CBS Chicago via CNET]

So what do you do when your kid almost buys an expensive car on eBay?

Tell him he really did buy it and reduce him to tears, of course. That’ll teach him.

The Facebook Data Science team looked at anonymous posts and comments between parents and their children on the network and produced a pretty interesting report on how families interact on the site. Their first finding had to do with the age of the child as an indicator of how likely they were to be the one to initiate the friendship with their parents.

Spolier alert – kids in their early to mid twenties don’t really have the desire to be Facebook buddies with mom and dad.

From Facebook:

From ages 13-17, the child is more likely to send the initial friend request. Over 65% of friendships between 13-year-olds and their parents are initiated by the child. But the older the child is when the friendship is formed, the less likely the child is to be the one sending the friend request, with the likelihood bottoming out at 40% for children in their early to mid-twenties. Then the probability of the child initiating increases again, eventually reaching 50% by their mid-40s.

Here’s that data visualized:

Once they parent and child become friends, the child becomes more likely to initiate contact via posts or comments as they get older. At every age, daughters are much more likely to initiate contact than sons.

You can check out the full report here.

The device comes with safety features and parental controls, obviously. Kids can browse the Internet, but there is a full suite of customizable parent controls. Parents can set tailored levels of security for up to eight, so kids of different ages can all use it without too having more restrictions than parents deem appropriate.

The Tabeo has its own filter, which can be set to block 27 predetermined categories of content, and parents can choose additional sites to block as well. They can also select specific online content to unblock. Kids can actually send requests to their parents to unblock sites if they come across something they want to check out.

Parents, if they so choose, can even limit their child’s online time, by setting Tabeo to allow access only on certain days or during certain hours. If kids bypass the default browser, parents will get email alerts to notify them that their child may be browsing unfiltered content.

“Over the past year, we’ve spent considerable time talking to parents and children to determine what features and functions they really want in a kids’ tablet, resulting in tabeo,” said Troy Peterson, VP, Divisional Merchandise Manager at Toys “R” Us, U.S.

“We are proud that tabeo offers robust and flexible parental controls that can help protect children as they surf the Internet, and we are pleased to offer the tabeo App Store, which features only kid-safe content carefully curated by the Toys “R” Us team,” he added.

Here’s a look at the specs:

The tablet comes with a green bumper to protect it from drops, as well as a USB cable and USB power adaptor. Toys “R” Us is also launching a suite of accessories, including different colored bumpers, cases, docks, and cables.

The Tabeo will be released on October 21, and will sell for $149.99. It’s currently available for pre-order at Tabeo.com and ToysRUs.com.

The fake Facebook profile was actually a creation of a mother and her daughter’s friend. After learning that her 17-year-old daughter was dating a convicted sex offender, 19-year-old William Elms, Julie Myrfors enlisted a teenage family friend to help her set up the fake account to trap him. The two created an account for a girl named “Ashley,” who they listed as 15 years old.

Once they tricked Elms into friend requesting Ashley through the staging of a fake squabble on the network, “Ashley” stuck up a dialogue with Elms. Soon, Elms was sending pictures of his genitalia to an email account set up for “Ashley.” According to the Skagit Valley Herald (Sedro-Wooley, Washington), Elms attempted to get “Ashley” to go camping with him and spend time discussing lewd sexual acts. “He also told her that if anyone asks, she should say she is 16 years old,” they report.

Although Myrfors orchestrated this Facebook sting without the help of local police, law enforcement stepped in when they were notified of the chats and pics. Elms is currently on probation stemming from a conviction for third-degree child molestation, which is defined by the Washington State criminal code as “sexual contact with another who is at least fourteen years old but less than sixteen years old” when the perpetrator is at least 4 years older than the victim.

According to NBC News, the Myrfors showed the evidence to their daughter, who even watched some of the lewd conversations with “Ashley” live, as they occurred.

“My daughter didn’t know we had done this. I invited her on to begin watching live. She started watching conversations on our fake little person,” said Mrs. Myrfor. “The hardest part as a parent was watching her heart break.”

Facebook has a strict policy against convicted sex offenders maintaining accounts, and even monitors chats for illegal communications. In this situation, the parents could have notified Facebook and probably had Elms’ account revoked, but I guess they wanted to do a little more than that.

And though we can debate the various pros and cons of a life spent socially networking until we’re blue in the face, many parents have already made up their minds. And their conclusions may shock you.

According to survey conducted by Missouri’s Children’s Mercy Hospitals and Clinics, parents overwhelmingly think that the pros of social media use outweigh the cons. A whopping 83% said that the benefits trump the risks.

And 72% said that “their child’s participation in social networking is good preparation for future work success in a world increasingly dependent on technology.” Over half tought that social media can help their kid become more open-minded, creative, and a better collaborator with others. So, parents think that the benefits of their kids staying connected to the world and becoming familiar with the skills they need to succeed outweigh the possible consequences of giving up a bit of privacy.

That doesn’t mean that parents are oblivious to the negatives of social media use. Parents with younger children are more concerned about things like Cyberbullying (56% of parents with kids aged 12 or younger concerned vs. 41% of parents with kids 13 and older), Depression and social withdrawal (43% vs 34%), and lack of ambition (54% to 41%).

And over half of parents worry about other things aided by tech like sexting. It may be with good cause.

Another interesting question the survey asked involved young kids on Facebook. We recently reported that Facebook was at least considering allowing kids under the age of 13 to join with some sort of parental oversight controls. As of now, Facebook prohibits sub-13 kids from participating on the network – although plenty of underage preteens lie (Facebook has to remove nearly 20,000 invalid accounts a day).

More than two-thirds (68%) of parents surveyed said that Facebook should keep the 13-year-old requirement.

[via Kansas City Star]

McAfee just released the results of their annual Teen Internet Behavior study, and the takeaway is that parents severely underestimate what their kids are up to online and how much time they’re spending online. Not only that, but teenagers are getting much better at hiding it.

According to a nationwide survey of 2000+ teens (age 13-17) and their parents, 73.5% of parents say they trust their teens to not access “age-inappropriate” content online. Despite that vote of confidence, McAfee reports that 43% of teens are accessing simulated violence, 36% are looking up sexual topics, and a third are checking out porn (43% of them on a weekly basis).

And when it comes porn, most parents have adopted the “not my little angel” mindset as only 12% acknowledge that their teen is probably looking at the stuff.

Teens are also getting better at fooling their parents. This year, 70% admitted to finding new ways to “avoid parental monitoring,” compared to only 45% two years ago. The top way reported was clearing the browser history (53%), followed closely by quickly minimizing the window when parents walk in (46%), and hiding/deleting videos and IM conversations (34%). One fifth of teens reported editing privacy settings and using private browser modes.

“While it is not necessarily surprising that teens are engaging in the same types of rebellious behaviors online that they exhibit offline, it is surprising how disconnected their parents are,” says Stanley Holditch, Online Safety Expert for McAfee. “There is a major increase in the number of teens finding ways to hide what they do online from their parents, as compared to the 2010 study. This is a generation that is so comfortable with technology that they are surpassing their parents in understanding and getting away with behaviors that are putting their safety at risk.”

Whether or not porn, excessive Facebooking, and a slew of other online activities teens engage in is actually a risk to safety is debatable, but this figure is not: 62.1% of teens say they witnessed cyberbullying, with 23.3% saying they have been the target. Only 10% of parents think their teen has been the target of cyberbullying.

Out of those witnesses to cyberbullying, 93% said that Facebook was where it took place.

Here are a couple of other findings from the study:

• Teens spend more time online than their parents think. On average, teens spend about five hours a day online; while parents only think their kids spend an average of three hours a day online. Nearly 10% of teens (10.3%) spend more than 10 hours a day online
• Parents are blind to how much teens check social networks. Teens are glued to their news feeds with 60% of social network users checking their accounts daily and 41% checking their accounts constantly. Only 48% of parents think their teens check their accounts daily, and only 22% believe their teens check their accounts constantly.
• Despite the rise of smartphones Generation Z goes online old school. Generation Z spends more time online via laptops (37.35%) and desktops (29.8%) compared to smartphones (13.48%) and tablets (5%).
• Teens don’t think online friends are dangerous strangers. 12% of teens reported meeting someone offline that they only knew through online interactions.
• Foursquare and check-in sites dwindling. Facebook was the most popular site with 89.5% of teens using it, followed by Twitter (48.7%), Google+ (41.5%), Tumblr (33%), Pintrest (20%), 4chan (23%), and MySpace (18%). Foursquare and location-based sites were the least popular among teens (12.2%).

Kids have been hiding what they do online since the days of AOL at 56Ks. Either they are just becoming more internet savvy, or parents are becoming more oblivious. Maybe it’s a little bit of both.

Apparently, Facebook is in the process of developing new technology that would make way for kids under the age of thirteen to become members of the network. Of course, that technology would be focused on the safety and privacy of the children and would most likely link their accounts to their parents’ accounts. According to the sources, the “under-13″ feature would allow parents to control who their child becomes friends with, and well as what apps and game purchases they utilize.

Of course, even if Facebook implements a new feature like this, it’s not like it will mark the first wave of sub-13-year-olds participating in the social network. Despite the clear ban of youngsters in Facebook’s Terms of Service, kids under the age of 13 have been using the service for quite some time. Some recent studies say that up to 38% of the kids on Facebook are under the official age requirement. Other reports have put the hard number at 7.5 million under-13 kids on the site.

How do these children do it? Well, they lie, and it’s that simple. Facebook’s age verification systems simply takes you on your word – as does every online age verification system. It’s not like beer websites and YouPorn are running background checks on browsers. The kids are getting in, but Facebook reportedly works pretty hard to remove underage accounts – 20,000 a day according to one report.

The underage account problem is an old and persistent one for Facebook, as it’s nearly impossible to truly enforce their policy. With a move like this, Facebook would be taking the “it’s going to happen anyway” approach, enlisting parents to guide their children through what, by now, seems like an inevitable process.

According to one UK Member of Parliament, it’s already happening. Tim Loughton made news back in April when he said that there was a rising trend of parents helping their underage kids navigate the Facebook minefield. He took a decidedly negative position on the practice, but I (and others, obviously) asked whether or not parents should shepherd their kids through the inevitable? There are 900+ million people on Facebook, and think about what a 12-year-old is – a middle schooler in many cases. Yeah, it’s safe to say that they are going to find their way on Facebook – with or without parental guidance.

So, why fight it, some would argue.

Then again, even with the watchful eye of parents, Facebook can be a rough landscape for young kids. Bullying, sexual predation, adult content – it’s all out there and can easily reach kids. Cyberbullying is hard enough to deal with if you’re 13 or even 16, but much worse if you’re 8 or 9. It’s a tricky debate, no doubt.

We’ve reached out to Facebook for comment and will update this accordingly.

UPDATE: We’ve heard back from a Facebook spokesman:

Many recent reports have highlighted just how difficult it is to enforce age restrictions on the Internet, especially when parents want their children to access online content and services. We are in continuous dialogue with stakeholders, regulators and other policymakers about how best to help parents keep their kids safe in an evolving online environment.