"71% of online 9-17 year olds visit these sites at least weekly." ~9:01am.com (July 3)

That's 7 out of 10 kids as young as nine years old are actively taking part in social networking sites on a weekly basis. That's a pretty high percentage of kids that are out there chatting with other kids every day. This is not the number of kids on the Net, these are just the number of kids who are actively using social networking on the Net. There are more kids than this actually on the Net. Some are out there to play games or do research.

With this many kids cruising around the World Wide Web the rest of us have to take care not to interfere with their online fun as we go about our own online business. You don't want to find yourself in an intriguing conversation with someone, ask to meet them in person, and then find out it's a 12 year old. You'll get yourself into trouble. No, you can't tell how old someone is by chatting with them.

We all know the dangers kids pose when they get into chatting online with others. They don't know or understand these dangers, but we do. If you know a kid with access to the Internet, that's just about all of them, you might want to talk to them, or their parents, about dangers and safety measures. With so many out there, naive to the ways of the world, there's bound to be many that need to be told.