Contact: Kent A. Miles, 678-838-8523
BUFORD, Ga., Oct. 29, 2013 -- /Christian Newswire/ -- This month, Facebook, the most dominant social media network on the planet with nearly 1.2 billion members, relaxed its privacy settings rules to allow new teenage members to share their posted information with anyone on the Internet.
This change affects teen users 13 to 17, a prime demographic for advertisers. Teens previously had been limited to sharing posts and photos only with their friends or friend networks. Now, they have the option of switching their settings so that whatever they share will be accessible by the general public. Facebook will warn teens that they are exposing their information to a wider audience, and the default settings will remain friends-only.
It remains to be seen whether teens understand how sharing their thoughts or pictures of their activities to a potential audience of millions can come back to haunt them. But this is what Steve Woda, CEO of uKnow.com -- a firm that provides social media monitoring of kids' accounts -- tells the blog Inside Facebook recently:
"I find teenagers are not great with the privacy settings. We see time and time again, teens making mistakes with regard to such settings. And it's difficult, right now, for a lot of parents to know if their kids are online. We constantly deal with parents trying to get a handle on this."
Woda tells Inside Facebook many parents don't understand social media sites well enough to follow all of their kids' activities. The new option policy for teens not only can keep such parents away from their children's pages, but the online savvy will understand how to access them.
Parents must have a means of countering the potential threats to their children engaged on the Internet: cyberbullying, "sexting" content, even online predators. The latest release of a service from a company called Legacy Technology Group and its founder, Damon Davis, can give parents that ability.
Davis' creation, Smart Shepherd, is powerful new software, downloaded as easy as an App, that allows parents to remotely monitor and control their children's online activity. Smart Shepherd has quickly become a trusted level of security for youth nationwide.
"[Smart Shepherd is] giving parents power and control again with a device that, quite candidly, has created a whole, private and separate world out there," says Davis, the creator of Legacy Technology Group. "The statistics show 60 hours a week [spent] on these phones. That's more than a full-time job on these little smart devices that you've got to absolutely [monitor] as a parent."
Smart Shepherd allows a parent to monitor all real-time phone activity on their child's phone from their own smartphone, including incoming and outgoing calls, text messages, emails, social media activity, pictures and videos viewed, and all Internet activity. Smart Shepherd also provides a Panic Button, a unique feature installed on the child's phone that automatically sends a text notifying the parents of an emergency situation. The feature also provides a map to the child's location while simultaneously taking photos of the area and uploading them to the parent's portal.
Smart Shepherd offers affordable and robust protection, security and vigilance for their children engaged online. It's an added measure of trust for parents who want and demand a safe online environment for their children.
Visit www.smartshepherd.com for more information about this unique mobile app. To connect with the community, visit www.facebook.com/smartshepherd on Facebook or twitter.com/SmartShepherd on Twitter. Watch for Twitter's upcoming initial public offering (IPO).
