“One in five British children has met a stranger they first encountered online,” the BBC reports, citing a survey from British identity-verification company Garlik. “As many as one in four 8-to-12 yea- olds ignore age restrictions to use social-networking sites.” Bebo and Facebook have a minimum-age requirement of 13 and MySpace of 14. In its coverage, The Telegraph zoomed in on what parents are doing about it: “The research shows parents are taking matters into their own hands with three-quarters snooping on their children online. One in four parents admit to secretly logging on to their child’s social networking page, while the same number have also set up their own page to spy on their kids.” This got a lot of coverage in the UK. Here, too, is The Guardian.
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