Cyberbullying has yet to lead to any physical fights or missed school days in Mamaroneck schools. But almost every Monday, kids come to their guidance counselors’ offices at Hommocks Middle School or Mamaroneck High School with printouts of hurtful or objectionable statements that have been posted online, said Hommocks Principal Seth Weitzman.

To keep the situation from spiraling out of control, the district applied for a grant to establish a series of workshops to “take a proactive approach before it becomes a problem,” said Nora Mazzone, assistant principal at Hommocks.

“The goal is twofold: to increase parents’ awareness of what cyber-bullying is and increase the kids’ ability to come forward and talk with adults," she said.

The district enlisted Katie Koestner, whose CyberSmarts program discusses how to avoid the pitfalls of cyberbullying. Her group held seminars for teachers yesterday and during an evening presentation at MHS, Koestner delivered a PowerPoint round-up of things parents should look for. Today, students will attend gender and grade specific workshops.

During her rapid-fire 80-minute presentation last night, entitled "From Cell Phones to Cyber-Pals: Parenting the Digital Generation," Koestner offered a dizzying array of statistics and tactics to help the 65 parents in attendance grapple with the effects of their kids’ internet footprint.

“I could talk to you for eight hours at least but I will drain your brain out,” she said. “All internet use should be trackable, traceable and retrievable. Tonight is about fence-building; you can’t have a free-for-all in the backyard.”

Adolescents are online an average of 7.5 to over 11 hours daily, she said, and monitoring their computer and cell phone use takes a lot of work. She offered tips that few attendees seemed to be familiar with. Who knew, for example, that a site called Vtunnel lets users navigate around internet filters or that teens could store data on their Xbox rather than their hard drive?

Or that gamers can switch into a special mode to enter secret rooms with explicitly graphic sexual content that Koestner called "grotesque" and "misogynistic."

Online values often undercut parenting goals, she said, since young cyber surfers rarely learn honor, integrity, kindness, leadership or patience. Even seemingly innocuous sites for younger children promote negative values.

On a typical screen found on Club Penguin, for example, a site owned by Disney, the scene played out in front of a coffee shop, a nightclub and a gift shop, which she said promoted caffeine, sex and materialism. The Webkinz site, she said, promoted games of chance that exploited synapses in the brain and promoted addiction to gambling.

“We all remember Candyland [the board game], right?” she asked rhetorically. “That was evil, but it wasn’t this bad.”

Most online sites are “time wasters not skill builders,” she said. “Don’t let your child talk you into this just because the other kids are doing it. They can get into college without being on Facebook.”

Indeed, college admissions officers are using digital resume programs that match up information included in an online application with an applicant’s digital dossier, so, “if you went on about your volunteer work with starving orphans 40 hours a week and there’s no mention of that on Facebook, it’s held against you.”

She also listed several child-friendly sites and search engines and discussed liability surrounding so-called “sexting” of risqué photos of underage kids and gatherings in a parent’s home. If kids have a party in someone’s home and alcohol is snuck in, for instance, cell phone images or videos could be used in legal proceedings even if the parent had no idea the activity was occurring.

Rina Beder of Larchmont, who has two boys, one a senior in high school and another in eighth grade, has communicated with her kids about the potential pitfalls of online communication. She tells her sons that if they wouldn’t want someone’s grandmother to read what they are writing, don’t post it.

The workshop was great, she said.

“It’s an interesting issue to tackle, since it’s so prevalent in the media and you hear kids talking about it. It’s always positive to raise awareness and knowledge is a good thing.”