When one considers all the technology that may come down the pipe, it is difficult to really imagine what our lives will be like in even 5 years. Suffice to say every advance in technology will reap an unexpected and sometimes unwelcome harvest. Look at how quickly our habits change. Next time you are standing in a Starbucks line-up notice how many people have their heads buried in some sort of mobile email device, most likely a BlackBerry. Access to email has become such a part of many people’s day to day lives that they are more addicted to their email than to the coffee they are lining up for! Just ask any one if they would rather go without their BlackBerry for a day or no coffee; no question, they will forgo the jolt of java in favour of being connected.

The changing nature of technology has put unprecedented pressure on parents today. The fact that the Internet is such a huge part of our children’s lives creates tremendous challenges for today’s parents. Our children are so very comfortable with the Internet and seem to assimilate any new wrinkle easily and effortlessly. We adults however struggle with the most basic of technical change, we are far behind your children in technical literacy and falling farther behind by the day.

I have spoken a lot recently about the responsibility we have to learn the technology in order to provide some guidance for our children regarding Internet security and safety.

I attended a cyber-safety conference last week in Edmonton, hosted by the Boy’s and Girl’s Club. We had a great collection of speakers who spoke about a wide variety of topics regarding Internet Safety. Even though I have been concentrating on the subject for quite some time there were several OMG moments as I listened to the different opinions.

This week I began my journey into Facebook, one of several major social networking web sites. Social networking sites are places on the internet where we set up shop for the express purpose of socializing, hanging with our friends.  There are many social networking sites to choose from, MySpace is probably the biggest of them all. So many people are signed up to MySpace, if it were a country it would have the world’s 6^th largest population!