Q. My kids have set up MySpace profiles, even though they were not supposed to. They insist that only their friends have access to their profiles, but how can a parent be sure? -Nancy Heslin, via e-mail
A. Overnight, MySpace replaced the convenience store parking lot or mall fountain as a gathering place for kids.
Each young user gets a home page containing a personal photo and a self-composed profile, as well as a message board to exchange info with friends and a blog spot to post thoughts.
Your real fix is to use the same parental powers and tactics that work for other hangouts.
Demand that your kids give you the same access that they give to their friends and other MySpace members. Then add that MySpace page to the Favorites in your own browser and make a daily practice of checking things out.
Better yet, set up your own MySpace account so you can watch your children’s MySpace space as a logged-in user. Signup is quick and simple.
If you go to www.myspace.com and browse the postings, you will find a range of age groups where kids registered as being ages 14 and 15 are communicating with 30- and 35-year-old men and women and where few holds seem to be barred. MySpace operators post warnings that children must be 14 and must not lie about their age, but there is nothing to stop a much younger child from joining.
Depending upon the age of your young’uns, you should consider intervening in how they set up their MySpace accounts to minimize the potential for hurtful and outrageous overtures from stalkers, general creepy people and high-pressure sales gimmicks.
When a person signs up for a MySpace account, privacy and security options can be set to minimize the downside on this Internet phenomenon that brings huge upside socializing for its audience.
You can discourage unknown people from getting through by requiring that a valid e-mail address be provided before that person can be added to the Friends list that is the heart and soul of this Web service.
Likewise, you can set the account to hide your kids from being listed to all comers when they go online; you can stop others from passing along e-mail links to download your kid’s photo and restrict blog posts to only people you know. You can even block the feature where music from a favorite band gets played when your kid visits somebody else’s area on MySpace, which will guard against offensive lyrics.
You can order your children’s accounts closed by going to www.myspace.com and clicking on the Safety item at the bottom of the page.
You also can find links that point to software that can be installed to let you monitor every keystroke the kids make.
