Are your kids at risk on social media? How many parents blanched when they read about the recent rape allegations involving three children that led to the Skout smartphone dating app closing and reviewing security measures in its teen section? This came at a time when many people have been discussing the very real safety and developmental hurdles should Facebook do more than just float the idea of opening the gate to kids under 12. Being a parent today means protecting our kids from the dangers lurking in many more dark corners than our parents and grandparents ever had to worry about. The predators aren't just the shady-looking guy on the outskirts of the playground, scouting for their prey. Today, they lurk without technically lurking, able to mask themselves in the obscurity of online personas and with access to many details about our kids without needing to spend much time and energy to get that information. So how on Earth is a parent to strike the precarious balance of allowing children to keep pace with the technology of the day while keeping them out of the ever-growing reach of predators using digital means to find them? "Banning social networking and mobile apps is trying to push back the clock," said Larry Magid, co-director of ConnectSafely.org, a nonprofit organization that receives financial support from Facebook, among other social networking companies. If you try, "you're just going to push them underground." Along those lines, parents may try finding ways to say "yes" to their kids' requests to use appropriate technologies, suggested Linda Criddle, director of LookBothWays and mother of four. "The first things that parents need to do is talk," she said. "The last thing that parents need to do is talk," with a lot of listening in between. Really, you have to be a part of what they're doing. Magid, who serves on Facebook's safety advisory board and is coauthor of "The Parents' Guide to Facebook," agreed. "Parents need to learn about technology, understand it, use it," he said. Ask [the kids] what they're using, and ask them to show you how it works. What can make our children's social media interactions scarier to us is the mobile element. These apps being on mobile phones mean that our kids are interacting with people we don't know unsupervised, as Magid points out. Plus, mobile may mean that the kids could be located even if they don't tell anyone where they are. "The mere fact that your location can be transmitted presents a risk," Magid said. The other risk is they are using it wherever -- not at home. All the rules about putting the computer in the center of the house go out the window. Because of that, maintaining candid conversations with our children, even if uncomfortable, is imperative. As a parent, Criddle said, you should be talking to your kids about whom they are interacting with electronically, what devices they are using and what they do - send photos or locations, for instance - and about how your kids feel in general, to better understand how emotionally vulnerable they may be to a predator at a given time. And parents need to have an ongoing conversation with their kids about sexual and physical abuse, she said. Children should be clear that "nobody ever has the right to make you feel uncomfortable. Nobody should be engaging you in sexual conversations," online or offline, Criddle said. That way, when they do encounter inappropriate requests, their internal "creep-o-meter" will go off, because they have already played through the scenario with their parents to prepare. Risky behavior is risky behavior, whether online or offline. Magid, the father of two, said it's crucial that children understand that talking about sex with strangers is one of the most dangerous things you can do online. The last thing that Criddle suggests is something she practiced as a parent of kids growing up in the Internet age: spot-checks. "What I used to with them was I let them know that I'd be doing periodic checks on what they're looking at, what photos they're sending, the music they're listening to and who they were calling," she said. Criddle said she was looking at overall safety -- not at every single word of a text conversation. She was checking to make sure that inappropriate photos weren't being sent or received and that she knew people her children were communicating with, among other things. "If I don't know them, we'd talk about who that was," she said. Ultimately, this fast-changing tech landscape can leave us parents sometimes feeling breathless and behind. "We need to slow down and have a conversation as a society about this," Jim Steyer, chief executive of Common Sense Media. Children are not data points to be aggregated and marketed to. In the meantime, he said, parents need to "teach digital literacy and digital citizenship. You have to teach your kid to be a safe, smart digital citizen.