Many now need to go no further than their own bedroom to access a world of social networking. Social networking site MySpace is estimated to have more than 65 million members worldwide. And nearly 1.5 million children in Britain had access to the internet from their own bedroom in 2005.
Online networking is complete with its own "handshakes", protocols and social conventions. But while the online acumen of the young often eclipses that of their parents', it is also a world that is increasingly geared towards children. This gives rise to an unsupervised social environment from which many parents are alienated.
Just like a "real-life" environment, this brings opportunities and challenges. In 2006, one in five London schoolchildren had experienced cyber-bullying and two-thirds of young victims kept this problem from the attention of their parents.
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