Safe Social Networking. In one word – Groove

The more horror stories I hear about children becoming victim to individuals who do not have their best interests in mind on the net, the more I realize that collaboration tools like Groove present another opportunity, as truly safe social networking environments for young kids and teens. Let me explain.
Groove allows controlled workspaces, where only individuals who have received an invitation from the workspace manager may enter into this space, where anything from document sharing to calendaring and the all important chat and message sending tools are embedded. (Groove’s calendaring makes for simple “play date” coordination; and the kids get to work with and learn time management skills. {In white paper go into the potential in time to send the calendar reminders to parents Outlook} Because it is a dynamic collaboration tool children (with parental consent) can easily add new friends. As impatient as children can be on long trips, they can also use Groove to prepare messages, load holiday pictures and videos, prepare travel blogs and then have them automatically sync with their friend’s spaces as soon as an internet link is established. (In fact this could be used as a family collaborative space where children and their grandparents can communicate in safety too.)
In a perfect world turning to this kind of business tool would not be worth considering. However there have been some serious events because trusting children have opened themselves up to interacting with what they think is someone that is a similar age. And soon some of these children are lured to parks and amusement places where they find that their 11 year old buddy is a 42 year old pedophile. In many cases these children escape scared but unscathed but it is a sad truth that the mental and physical scars of some of these encounters are frightening.
Groove represents an opportunity for parents to provide a safe haven for children to interact with others without compromising their safety, until they are old enough to be taught safe surfing skills. This also means children can be safely left to “play” on their own, something that has been inherently dangerous, even with the net aware products. A good predator will never break the boundaries of these tools but rather work around them. With Groove there are never opportunities for this to happen. The only caveat is the trust within the parental circles of your own social network. Nothing is perfect but Groove can, with the will of the right executives be turned into the best protector yet of our most precious asset....our children.