After learning of the alarmingly high statistics of cyber-bullying from local law enforcement, Redmond-based Schakra introduced a new Facebook application for parents yesterday in the effort to curb risky social media behavior in children.

The launch of GoGoStat Parental Guidance coincides with the beginning of summer, which is when many kids increase their use of social Web sites like Facebook.

Parental Guidance was developed to give parents the ability to supervise their children’s use of the Internet without seeing everything they do. The new application allows parents to monitor and respond to their children’s activities on social networking sites such as Facebook.

The motivation to create the application came about after learning from local law enforcement about the high percentages of children who say they have been cyber-bullied (42 percent) and solicited sexually (20 percent) via the Internet, according to Schakra product manager Ron Stevenson. The percentage is even higher for kids who do not tell their parents about the situation (75 percent).

GoGoStat Parental Guidance “gives parents a tool, it’s not blocking anything, but notifying,” said Stevenson.

While aimed at curbing cyber-bullying and sexual solicitors, Parental Guidance also aims to hold children responsible for upholding family rules and expectations on the Internet without constant guardian supervision.

When parents download the application on Facebook, they can then specify which guidelines, rules, and other habits they want to monitor on their child’s profile such as swear words in status updates, photos, the age range of their friends, and what kind of personal information they are releasing.

In order for the application to work, parents and children must exchange and enter a parental security code to Facebook. Parents and children must be “friends” on Facebook as well, because as Stevenson noted, “technology does not trump relationships.”

“We are trying to solve the problem of breaking family rules and cyber bullies taking advantage of children,” stated Stevenson, father of a 13-year-old. “How do you give parents a window without it seeming like they are reading everything?”

Automated monitors report to parents only the information breaking the selected rules so that they don’t have to read everything.

“We don’t want to prohibit kids, but parents need to be notified,” said Stevenson, who also noted that the application is respectful of the new Facebook privacy rules, achieving a balance of privacy and supervision.

Another feature of GoGoStat Parental Guidance is the “Panic Button.” This element is one that can be used in an emergency situation if a child goes missing and their current picture and information are needed. Parents can simply click the button and an emergency report of their child will be printed with the most recent photos and updates that they posted.

The initial application is free with a premium version expected soon that will produce trending reports for parents at a low price.

According to Stevenson, most of the Schakra team consists of former Microsoft employees who switched companies in order to create a new technology that provides the ability to create applications and leverage social media. This was achieved through their GoGoStat platform, which enables developers and enterprises to create applications with a level of intelligence to route things, based on user intent.

Two months ago Schakra launched GoGoStat Sync, which links multiple social media accounts for the user. For example, a person’s tweets on Twitter can also be their status updates on Facebook.

The entire GoGoStat idea has been in progress at Schakra for a little more than a year and the Parental Guidance application has been in the works for a matter of months, said Stevenson, who has been with Schakra since February of this year.

Schakra is located at 4004 148th Ave NE in Redmond. All elements of the GoGoStat platform, Parental Guidance included, can be found at www.gogostat.com.