What is Yoursphere?

Yoursphere is a social network that's designed to keep kids safe. Yoursphere founder Mary Kay Hoal is a mother of 5 whose children had started to join and poke around MySpace. She did a little research and decided to bar all social networks from her home in order to keep her kids safe. But she realized that saying no to dangerous sites would be a lot easier if there was a site she could say yes to. So, she put her own ideas and entrepreneurial skills to work and joined with a team of individuals who helped her make safe social networking a reality.

Concerns for Parents

• Yoursphere does a lot to create a safe environment for kids, but there's no way to guarantee that sneaky and deceptive predators won't be able to get in somehow.

• Research is beginning to show that social networking may actually be addictive. Your kids may spend too much time on Yoursphere, taking time away from school work and social interaction with the real world.

How Can I Keep My Child Safe?

• While there's no such thing as a social network that's 100 percent risk-free, Yoursphere is about as safe as social networks get. Still, talk to your kids about basic Internet smarts (don't post personal information, don't cyberbully, and so on.

• Set firm time limits on your child's computer use. If you have to, you can even install software that will shut off Internet access once a certain time of day or amount of time online has been reached.

Where Can I Learn More?

Read this site about Yoursphere. It does a great job of explaining how the site is structured and why it's a safer choice than MySpace or Facebook.

Read this review of the site by Common Sense Media.