Like any 13-year-old my daughter wants to dive head first in to the "rule free" world of adults. She grimaces and rolls her eyes with the best of them. Like any mom I want to keep my daughter young and protected. I cringe at the number of my daughter's friends who have set up MySpace and FaceBook pages -- without their parent's permission AND using phony ages. Yes, these 12- and 13-year-olds are listing themselves as 15 or older. As an adult I know to only accept friends who I KNOW. I have a feeling a 13-year-old might accept any and all friendship requests. Who knows who is lurking on FaceBook trolling for unsuspecting teens. Scary. For me, Yoursphere is a safe place for my daughter to network. I am confident about and comfortable with the environment of the spheres on Yoursphere. My daughter, a budding writer, loves writing on Yoursphere. Yoursphere allows kids to write about what they want -- I am sure at times the writing seems juvenile and irrelevant to adults, but these are kids 9-18 writing for other kids 9-18. My daughter loves the feedback she gets from other budding writers in her writing sphere. She refers to them as her "peer editors." As for the cost of Yoursphere, I look back at the computer games and online services I have purchased in the past for my children when they were younger. In the past I have purchased a CD-ROM game or two per year for approx. $30 per game. I've also paid for about 30 WebKinz and the online experience for my little ones @$12-$14 each. Yoursphere is an extension of my child's online learning experience.

Not as safe as it seems. It has a long way to go

My 10 year old son is a huge fan of Yoursphere. He is on the shy side so the social aspect of this site has really helped build his confidence by connecting him to kids who share his interests. He's made friends from kids all over the country, and I don't worry about inappropriate contact from adults one bit. The site monitors activity very closely and handles any off-limits behavior in a timely. sensitive manner. Also, the founder has a website called YoursphereForParents that I subscribed to awhile ago. It has easy to understand practical advice for setting privacy controls on all your kids' electronic toys, and I've learned a lot about some of the seriously privacy and safety issues that affect families. I encourage my family and friends to be informed and proactive. The Internet and social sites have so much to offer but like anything else you need to use these tools appropriately. My son told me I should be sure to tell you that Yoursphere is :"fun", kids can do "a lot of cool stuff" and the virtual world is "awesome."

its ok... there are no sexual Preditors on that site.