Mary Kay Hoal is the founder and President of YourSphere Media, Inc., a youth-centered, driven social media network for children ranging in ages from nine to 14 years. 

YourSphere has partnered with Kabillion, an Emmy Award-winning multi-media content provider for children offering video on demand and broadband products. Forty thousand households from Kabillion are making their community on YourSphere.

Hoal’s advice about social media is predicated upon the YourSphere solution which offers privacy …

… “Whether it is meant this way or not, it feels like whatever you do or fail to do in high school determines the rest of your life,” said one class of 2010 Granite Bay senior who further explained that binge drinking and ecstasy are huge releases. “Students work hard and party hard,” declared this same teen…

by Joanne McNabb, CIPP/US/G/IT

Joanne McNabb is the Chief of the California Office of Privacy Protection. She offers some critical tips about passwords for Internet Safety Month, June

There has been a spate of password hackings and breaches in recent months. In June alone, news stories reported that more than 6.5 million passwords stolen from LinkedIn, eHarmony and Last.fm were posted on a hacker web site. Doesn’t sound too bad? You simply change your …

Banana Moments Anecdote

When my son was very young, perhaps five years old, I asked him, “Who is responsible for your behavior?”

He thought about it for a moment.

“You are!” he declared, quite confident that he was correct—after all, this is what he believed.

“No,” I responded, “You are in charge of Your behavior. However, I am the one who is responsible for the consequences for your good and poor choices.”

At that moment, …

Our cyber-powered culture amplifies adolescent pressures at earlier ages. For many, by the time they reach high school, there is a sense of urgency to be successfully established in a field of choice that has largely been determined by what youth believe will gain them acceptance and admiration by others: such as attending a top college, or getting into a field with high GPA barriers to entry, such as medical or engineering. (See Race to …

And Dad did the most important thing a father can do for his children: he loved their mother who gave her life to our family.

TheFish103.9 CyberParenting Topics Tuesdays

The best way to help our children feel secure and to withstand the pressure of the network giving rise to youth issues, (anxiety/sleeplessness, cyberbullying, drug and alcohol abuse, sexual exploitation), is to help them discover a sense of purpose.

Below are some summer projects to engage your children.

In the process of completing these projects with them, you are also bonding over things that truly impact the heart and mind and …

…How we respond to stress is what we can control, especially when everything else is out of our control…

…Help your child with the ability to govern themselves, separate from the network and speak truth with mercy. That means sometimes you will agree to disagree with peers…