TEENAGE girls have become increasingly scared for their personal safety, with one in three not feeling safe in their own home at night.

The Dolly Youth Monitor, which surveyed 600 youths aged between 10 and 17 across Australia, also found three-quarters of girls don’t feel safe in their neighbourhood at night and 60 per cent are scared to walked down their street after dark.

Dolly editor Gemma Crisp said she was shocked by the result.

“We didn’t even see this one coming,” she said.

“But teenagers have a lot more freedom than in the past, and increased freedom means increased vulnerability.”

Information overload and teenagers’ self-absorbed attitude contributed to teenage fears, Crisp said.

“They hear about bashings, muggings, gangs, people getting attacked in their homes, and think ‘I’m not safe then either’,” she said.

“Teenage girls live their lives thinking ‘it’s all about me’ instead of ‘that would never happen to me’.”

Wangaratta triplets Steph, Marina and Amelia said yesterday they often feared for their safety.

“Sometimes what I hear about people getting attacked and bashed, it really scares me and makes me think twice about going out by yourself,” Amelia said.

“I hate being home by myself and don’t feel safe sometimes, especially when it’s dark and something frightens you, like a phone ringing,” Marina said.

Steph said she would never walk around Melbourne or parts of her home town alone at night.

“It’s something I often think about,” she said.

In line with the surging popularity of alcopops among teenage drinkers, four out of five teens surveyed said regular drinking was acceptable.

The number is a sharp increase from 16 years ago, with only 62 per cent believing it was OK when the bi-annual survey began in 1992.

But the number of teens who thought using drugs, especially marijuana and cigarettes, was acceptable had dropped.

Teens are also increasingly tech-savvy, sending an average of 7.3 SMS each day and spending about $26 on mobile phone calls each month, with mum and dad usually paying the bill.

The survey also found three-quarters use their mobile phone daily.

One in five survey respondents said they had their own website, and more than half of teenage girls aged 14-17 used social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook.

It’s well known that kids and young adults of many ages have taken up the trade of blogging, either for personal or professional reasons. But how many of the generation born in the era of global interconnectedness can say that their mothers in particular have had their hands in social Web services and publication platforms? Not many, one might think. And one might be right. But of course there are exceptions to every rule.

In celebration of this Mother’s Day, Ellen Lee, a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, documents a few such cases involving methods by which mothers of the world have utilized the coterie of connectivity options ranging from blogs (both standard-sized and micro) to social networks in order to document the process of pregnancy to parenthood. Services such as Typepad, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter have all been applied to the momentous time of childbirth.

One example given is that of a Facebook employee sharing alerts and photographs chronicling moments of motherhood with a personal network of some 400 individuals, including a nonagenarian grandmother-in-law. As might be expected, her Facebook page in turn flooded with virtual gifts to mark the occasion of the birth of her son. Another case in point: a co-founder of the blogging stalwart Six Apart by the name of Mena Trott spent her hours in labor documenting her stay at the hospital from her cellphone. (Nevermind that cellphones aren’t generally allowed to be used around some medical equipment. As we say above, exceptions can be made, right?)

Lee goes on to offer statistics gleaned from the Internet researcher eMarketer of the rising number of mothers that have ventured online. It is said that some 80% of mothers in the US make their way onto the Web “at least once a month.” The researcher estimates that some 35.3+ million mothers will spend a portion of their time on the Web in 2008. That carries over from about 32 million in 2006. What for? To research baby products, of course. And to connect with family and fellow matriarchs, or even just to build and maintain a sort of digital diary and scrapbook of the early life of their newborn(s). One particular service which we here at Mashable recently highlighted, called Kidmondo, is indeed purposed specifically to enable parents to maintain personal sites for their young children.

According to a BlogHer report referenced by Lee published this year, mothers familiar with the ways of blogging are very much invested in social services, with 71% maintain profiles on MySpace, 44% on Facebook, and 1.8% on Twitter. Naturally, most activity among those users is centered around the sharing of photographs, with a smaller, yet still sizable percentage of individuals sharing videos.

All in all, the trend of female adoption of online services is headed nowhere but up. For about two years or so, it has increasingly been understood that girls outnumber boys as far as registration and active use of blogging software and social networks. Now it seems that older female demographics have taken note of the usefulness of such things, and adapting them to serve their wants and needs in ways that.

So to mark this holiday we say this any and all mothers out there on the Web: keep blogging, keep networking, keep Twittering even. Most importantly, keep sharing. The fact that the Web 2.0 space is evolving to encompass more of the general populace, and not only the geek class, goes far in proving its ultimate legitimacy. And hey, who doesn’t love baby pictures? The more the merrier.
Story Source Mashable.com

As any “Weeds” fans knows, the inclusion of Mary-Kate Olsen as uber-Christian yet morally grey Tara Lindman last season was blatant stunt casting. She was not believable, good or capable of holding her own against the show’s other hyphenate, the brilliant Mary-Louise Parker. I’m still having nightmares about the scene when she dry-humped Silas on the playground.

But that hasn’t stopped Showtime from throwing MK’s oversized hat into the ring as a potential Best Guest Actress nominee for this year’s Emmy Awards. Now just because someone is submitted doesn’t mean they’ll bag a nom, there are still many hurdles to cross, like the voting pool actually viewing Mary-Kate’s work.

But should the TV Academy have an aneurysm and toss a nod her way, there might be a few more surprises headed our way. Britney Spears will also be eligible for the category following her work on “How I Met Your Mother” as will Lindsay Lohan for her upcoming stint on “Ugly Betty.”

This will be the first time the three would be competing since they all vied for the last bed at Betty Ford.

Ashlee Simpson and Pete Wentz are rushing to the aisle and will wed next week in California, according to Internet reports.

The couple reportedly has sent out invites to friends and family, urging them all to be ready for a big day on May 16.

Gossip Web site Hollyscoop.com reveals Wentz and Simpson are refusing to give too much away, keeping the site of the wedding a secret.

A source tells the Web site, “The location will not be revealed until the day of the wedding but guests are told it will be an hour drive from Los Angeles.”

If the nuptials do go ahead as reported, this will be the second of three big star spring 2008 weddings: Mariah Carey and Nick Cannon exchanged vows in The Bahamas last week and Charlie Sheen will wed Brooke Mueller on May 30.