Q: Scott, I am wondering about your opinion, of course, but most of all, am hoping that since so many people read your column, they might pay more attention to this subject.
I have raised a beautiful, intelligent 15-year-old daughter who is an honors student at her high school. She has always been a responsible teenager with whom I’ve been fortunate not to have had too many battles – until this weekend, after I deleted her MySpace.com account.
MySpace.com!!!! This website is a world for kids under 18 to belong to that allows them to be able to do and say whatever they want without having to worry about their parents finding out. It has a login and password AND a backdoor web address so us parents who are smart and block the website, still can’t win. I gained access to this site, in particular my wonderful daughter’s page, and was sickened by what I saw. There is 80% profanity, various pics of these kids in provocative poses where other teenagers can actually leave sexy comments on them, they have their own blog going, own e-mail and links to websites you wouldn’t want your kids going to. To make matters worse, I clicked to delete her site, was told it was deleted, then I find out she is back on it with the same profile a few days later! It was not only NOT deleted, but the instructions to delete a MySpace website are to contact your child and get their login and password. This site sucks! Nobody under 18 should be allowed access and numerous lawsuits are occurring re: the access to porn from here, etc.
Bottom line, the Internet today is not controlled and we, as parents, need to be sure that if our kids have access to e-mail or other areas, that it is through an account of ours so we have control on when to check it, etc. BEWARE! You cannot monitor what they are doing and believe me when I say that you really should. I have heard other parents complaining about this website and how their kids are so reliant on it. Nothing in our kids’ lives should be THAT important that they lie and run away over a website! The weekend dealing with deleting her site was hell but it is done and she will live.
Scott, have you heard much on this issue? I am trying to make parents aware that this is not just some innocent website that your kids are having fun on. It is a venue for them to get in trouble without you knowing….
– “A parent who thought she was involved in her kid’s life”
SCOTT: What’s this? A new fad? Something new for kids to take and exploit? Those teenagers…
MySpace is all about freedom and identity creation. It’s a public place where users promote their music, books, designs, photography, and even advice columns (see, here’s !)
Not everyone has something to market and so they’ll use it as a personal blog or to meet people. The concept is that it’s “your space” to use as you wish and it’s all out there in public for everyone to see, hopefully within the scope of MySpace decency guidelines which prohibits telephone numbers, street addresses, and photographs containing nudity, or obscene, lewd, excessively violent, harassing, sexually explicit or otherwise objectionable subject matter. That pretty much covers everything.
MySpace user accounts have recently reached the 90 million figure. Wow! Not bad for being just 2-1/2 years old. Parents need to think of it as a public place because it is.
Most people out there in public are fine and don’t have ulterior motives but Internet predators are very real and you want to do everything you can to keep them away from your kid. MySpace recently implemented new restrictions so no one 18 or over can request to be on the friends list of a 14- or 15 year-old unless they already know either their e-mail address or full name. Children 13 and under are already prohibited from creating accounts and MySpace only displays partial profiles of users 14- or 15-years-old, but even a 13-year-old can figure the workaround for that one since MySpace has no way of knowing a user’s true age. Look for new screening procedures on MySpace and legislation at the congressional level in the near future.
So now you’ve been warned, and hopefully others have been too, that MySpace is just one more avenue of potential trouble for your kid. If you’re a concerned parent, you’ve got two choices: install Internet monitoring software so you can review a transcript of your kid’s every move or keep the PC under lock and key just like the liquor cabinet.