Scribblings

My Space

It seems like My Space has been all over the news lately. This is a popular site for teenagers (as well as other folks) online and what makes it different is that it's a social networking site--I guess. I'm trying to learn about it. The first stories I heard were of kids in our area being arrested for what they were blogging. One middle schooler had videos of after school fighting. Another high schooler boasted about selling drugs and actually had pictures of himself with guns. Then there are the horror stories about the predators--kids going out and meeting adults who just want sex.

On MySpace, you are supposed to be 14 or older. To me, 14 is still too young but that's not the half of it. You can put down your age as up to 102. Underage kids are going to lie if they want a site on MySpace bad enough. Parry Aftab, an internet privacy and security attorney, writes

MySpace.com has developed special software to review the profiles of their members, to try and find anyone under age, based on information the members post about themselves. It’s not perfect, but it does help spot the underage members.

While MySpace.com is doing its best to keep your children from using their website and lying about their age, it’s up to parents to do their job too. Parents need to talk with their children about not sharing personal information online. Personal information includes pictures, names and addresses, schools they attend, cell and phone numbers and many other less obvious things, such as the name of their school team, ethnic background and even a mall near your house.

I've been exploring My Space out of curiosity and because I want to make sure my kids are safe. I haven't got much expertise, I guess, because I not only didn't find suggestive pages and blog entries (I am probably not looking in the right places, I don't think like a predator) I managed to get myself onto a couple of groups there--book lovers, cat lovers, and baby boomers. Sigh.

I did see profiles where too much information was given away. I talked to my kids about not putting personal stuff onto the internet a long time ago. Sometimes the most innocent little thing can give away your location so I'd like to be able to make sure what they have is fine. But how would I find them if they don't want to be found? The advice is to get their user names and email addresses--but those things can change. The television advice was: don't let your kids have myspace accounts. I don't agree with that--how can you stop it? They could go to other places and sign up.

It seems the best way is communication, communication, communication.

As I was exploring, I came across a gentleman who was wondering if myspace was safe for kids anymore. He keeps a blog elsewhere but came across MySpace after his nephew killed himself. :( He provided several links for parents to read:

Predator's Playground

MySpace Chat Leads To Man's Arrest For Alleged Sexual Assault

View What Your Teens Do Online

He had an article about a boy who was assaulted too.

I looked for recently MySpace stories in the Philadephia Inquirer because I remembered there were quite a few of them and found these:

Teen Arrested After MySpace.com Posting

MySpace leads to teen’s arrest

Prosecutors: Men used MySpace.com to meet underage girls for sex

20 Calif. Students Suspended Over Web Site

Wow. This is really scary stuff!

For tips and other advice, here is another link I found on the man who lost his nephew's website:

Wired Safety and see what else parents can do to protect their kids.

Curious As A Cat

Question Number Nine:

At what point in your life did you first experience total trust in someone or something?

I think I was just a toddler or very young child. I had complete trust in my grandma, who always loved me and I felt safe with her.

Posted by Cassie at March 6, 2006 02:02 PM | TrackBack