Even my friends and wider family look at me in a different light. I am the victim.

The need for a tool to help Hispanic parents is clear. Almost 16% of the U.S. population is Hispanic and the typical U.S. Hispanic family has on average 2.16 children in the household under 18. Facebook estimates that 9% of the social network’s U.S. members are Latino (Sources: US Census Bureau and Hispanic Magazine).

GoGoStat Parental Guidance Spanish Edition, created by former Microsoft employees, identifies risky behavior and provides information for parents to share with their children. Parental Guidance alerts parents so they can act quickly, notifying them when pre-established ‘family ground rules’ are violated, inappropriate text is posted, new contacts are made, or photos of their children are uploaded. Parental Guidance detects if the user’s browser is set to Spanish rather than English, and then automatically displays instructions, settings and reports in Spanish.

My first language is Spanish and many times I do not understand the English slang .The challenge for us is unique if our teens are bilingual, yet they are using English online with friends. I think that Hispanic parents need to keep their teens safe on social media and enabling them to monitor activity as easily as possible. They can use this tool to guide their teens on making the right decisions while posting to social networks and be alerted to new status messages containing unsafe or potentially offensive comments.

One major concern is cyberbulluing. Many youth tend to be more free-willed on social networks. Teens often feel more comfortable disclosing personal information on social networks and this often makes them vulnerable to cyberbullying. Some of these details can serve a bedding ground for the spreading of rumors, malicious anonymous commenting, and identity theft. Anonymity on Facebook and other social networking sites gives bullies an added disinhibition that may not have in real world situations. This disinhibition sometimes leads bullies to expressing more malicious behaviors that they may not have done in face to face situations. Additionally, cyberbullies do not suffer the immediate repercussions that they would if they were to bully someone in real life situations.

I dont like swearing and name calling so I didnt go that 'anything goes forum' and it all calmed down. Then I was lulled back in and had a good enjoyable day discussing technical stuff with various members. Then 24 hours later the 4 women descended into a forum on machine gun triggers – something they were not interested in I am sure – together taking turns, using abuse and name calling and backed each other up.

One other member cried foul and was sent a personal nessage to invite her to join the others in beating on me.

Eventully one of the women who was a 'moderator' !!! on the site (2 of them were actually moderators)said I had a personality problem, I was mentally ill, I had no friends and my neighbours hated me.

The site rules say that nobody can criticise or even mention moderators so there was no way to complain

I was really upset at all this and thought of just packing it in – but I have decided to stay and calmly point out what they are doing so that future members might be spared. I wont spend much time there though as it is wearing. I have checked to make sure it isnt just me and it isnt – they hunt other people, usually older males, and they all turn up at once in a forum and attack as a group – sometimes taking over the thread and talking about baking or something.

If these are moderators, what chance does someone have ? I am 61 – imagine a young teenager getting involved in all that stuff – it would wreck their schoolwork and depress them and perhaps worse

The point is that the you can't always block what or who is posting online. Knowing that there is terrible and often times false information being published, with the intent to hurt, is an awful feeling. The internet is a place that people all over the world access, and when discriminating things are posted you never know just how many people have or will see. It has a very strong emotional effect on people and I do not feel that telling someone to get over it is the right thing to say.

We are a very technologically savy world and the ways in which people are abusing those technologies is appalling. We need to be aware that this truly is a problem and that we need to support those who have been violated online.