MySpace.com is NoPlace for YourKids
by Doug Fodeman, Director of Technology at Brookwood School

Once again our children’s behavior online compels me to write an article to parents to express my concerns and to help parents understand what popular activity children are engaging in online that is often not healthy or appropriate for them. I am speaking about online social communities such as Friendster.com, Facebook.com, Xanga.com and, specifically, MySpace.com. It seems that the popularity of MySpace.com has skyrocketed to more than 30 million users in the last year. MySpace is a social network where anyone can set up an account where they talk about themselves, post their photos, fill out surveys about what they like or do, and set up ongoing discussions where visitors (presumeably people they know) are dropping by their space and posting notes.

As is typical to kids online MySpace appears to be a fun place where they can connect to others. Remember, it is never about technology, it’s about using technology to further their relationships that makes it so enticing and fun. However, the problems with MySpace and other such sites are threefold..

These social sites are primarily used by older teenagers and young adults and, as such, tend to have content that is not appropriate for young teens and tweens. The banter that goes back and forth on many personal pages is sometimes very sexual or filled with explitives and language that we would never want our children to use. The anonymity of the internet makes it easier for participants to say things that they would not normally say in a face-to-face social situation. For example, I personally know a very sweet 18 year old girl whose postings are spiced with profanities on MySpace. Her chats are antithetical to who she really is and leave the reader thinking that she is a very different person. A precept to teach children about their online life: Be yourself online as you are in person! If you are still “on the fence” and thinking that it is OK for your 13 or 14 year old to have a personal page on one of these social networks ask yourself how you would feel about dropping your child off at a party where nearly everyone is a stranger and the average age is twenty. Anyone may approach your child or, in this case, visit their personal pages to read about them, their friends and post a message; which brings me to my second point...

Children are posting too much personal information and do not consider the ramifications of this. Here is an example I found which makes this point obvious:

Hey mi name is [Name removed] and i luv to sing act and model~!~!~! i am a ch33rleader with amazing friends~!~!~! i go 2 [School name removed] intermediate and i am in 6th grade. i luv VB(volley ball)~!~!~!~! i was recently on a ch33rleading team called [Team name removed]. i ch33red 4 da pirates~!~!~!~!

In addition to the above information the sixth grader posted her AIM screen name. It took me only a moment of sleuthing on the internet to find the complete address of her school along with directions/maps and telephone numbers, game times and locations of the Youth Football Association where she was cheerleading. If I had wanted it I could have found a schedule of her volleyball games as well. Should I have wanted to meet her in person I would have everything I needed. Precept #2: Never ever post personal information about yourself online! Protect your privacy!

And by the way, someone else had posted a link in the sixth grader’s chatbox that led to a soft porn/dating web site. No doubt the visitor thought it was humorous to do so. I found it offensive to think that someone was posting pornography links on this 11 year old’s personal page.

While I do not want my child to grow up fearful of the world around them I cannot deny that there are bad people crawling these sites and looking for vulnerable children, primarily girls. In the last two months alone I have read two separate news stories in which a young teenage girl was identified by her MySpace page, tracked down and raped. Recently I spoke to a group of 8th graders in New York. One of the girls had posted a photo of herself in a bikini and when I spoke about the strangers crawling through pages looking for girls to contact her response was “like there are about 30 million people on it. What are the chances that he’s gonna find me!” Children don’t understand that their behavior online increases their risks. Anecdotal evidence suggests that children who are most at risk of being harmed physically and/or emotionally are those who participate in public chat forums or post material about themselves in public communities.


Also no amount of conversation would have convinced the young lady with whom I spoke that there are some conversations for which she is not developmentally ready or age-appropriate. Nonetheless, that is true. Which brings me to my third and final point...

I would argue that children are growing up faster than many of us parents would like them to. In many many cases the online activities of children are contributing to this acceleration by exposing children to languague, content, visual imagery and social interactions that they are not yet ready for nor should they be. Though it is an difficult task in our culture to try to enable children to be children for as long as possible, it is a battle worth fighting. Participation in sites such as MySpace contribute to this trend.


Some additional articles about these issues:

Kids, blogs and too much information: Children reveal more online than parents know
By Bob Sullivan, MSNBC Technology Correspondent
www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7668788

Level 3 offender held in teen rape By Rob Margetta, Standard-Times staff writer


A discussion about some of these issues about MySpace.com
www.netfamilynews.org/nl050923.html

Staying safe while networking on Web: Popular site among teens raises access issues
By Lisa Pemberton
www.theolympian.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051127/NEWS/51127003

Soldier on leave charged in try to lure girl, 13; He is latest suspect nabbed by task force in Marshfield By Shamus McGillicuddy, The Patriot Ledger
ledger.southofboston.com/articles/2005/12/29/news/news02.txt

Trash talk in Online Games
ledger.southofboston.com/articles/2005/12/29/news/news02.txt"

Final note: NetFamilyNews.org is an excellent community of resources for parnents to stay in tune with the activities of kids online and how other families are coping with technology in the lives of their children. There is a free newsletter to which you can subscribe.