MySpace 101: Staying Safe on One of the Internet’s Hottest Sites

By: Leah Wuergler

For years parents have been concerned about the safety of their children when it comes to the Internet. We all know that the Internet can be dangerous for children and adults alike. There are people who will do anything to steal someone’s identity, innocence and peace of mind.
But lately parents have been worried about the possible dangers of a Web site that cloaks itself in a mask of “friendship”… which for most users is true, but in the news lately the site has been getting flack for the dangerous people who have started using the free site as a way to continue Internet crimes.
MySpace.com has become a smash hit over the past couple of years. It started in 2003 and as of March 2006 was the fifth most popular English language site, according to Alexa Internet and www.wikipedia.org.
The site was started by Tom Anderson, president, and Chris DeWolfe, chief executive, as a way to help bands and musicians have a place to be heard by the public. It all exploded from there. MySpace is used by more than 61 million people, Wikipedia said, and most of those people use the site to stay in touch with old friends, discover new music and find new friends.
Parents are becoming concerned because MySpace users keep getting younger, and pedophiles have destroyed the safety and novelty of the site for everyone. It used to be that a user had to be 16 to get an account, but the minimum age has been changed to 14. Unfortunately, there is no way for Anderson and News Corp (the company run by Rupert Murdoch that recently purchased MySpace for $580 million) to keep people from lying about their age.
Another concern that parents have is that there also doesn’t really seem to be any way for MySpace to uphold its own rules. For example, the site’s rules specifically say that pictures containing nudity, violence, offensive images or copyrighted images will lead to the account being deleted.
The powers that be at MySpace have not kept that promise on many occasions. When browsing through to find new people or maybe catch an old friend from high school, users run into random pictures of naked people and drunken stupidity. The fact that adults cannot browse for people under 18 may be a way of protecting children and teens, but when someone of any age can find nudity and other harmful images it’s no wonder parents are wary.
“Myspace was way cool at first,” said Brooke, a 12-year-old girl posing as a 16-year-old on MySpace. “I had heard stories about them and like kids being killed by being on Myspace, or something. Every time I heard one of those stories I just thought, ‘How stupid were those kids? I mean, you don’t add anybody you don’t know, and you don’t look on anybody’s page that you don’t know.’ So I thought I was safe and I thought this was the best thing that ever happened to me before cell phones came into my life.”
Because Brooke’s age shows as 16, she can browse for people as young as 16 herself. She claims that she has chosen not to and because of a recent Oprah special she hasn’t used the site in a couple of weeks.
“My cousin brought it up in front of my parents,” she said. “And of course they were concerned, but I defended myself and told them that it was perfectly safe and you can choose your friends and everything. But I told them that I wasn’t going to get on Myspace anymore. They were relieved, and I felt a little safer.”
One concerned parent has created an account of her own to check up on her son.
“He joined MySpace when he was 13, and I got concerned about some of the stuff I saw on his page,” she said. “So my husband and I created an account pretending to be a girl of the same age so we could get the stuff he sends to friends and read his bulletins.”
Bulletins on the site enable people to send information out to everyone on their friend list. Most people use this to send out surveys to their friends and get to know each other better. Bands send out bulletins about shows, new music and videos.
Some parents might not go so far as to create their own page, but in some cases it might be the only way to find your child on the Web site.
You may be unfamiliar with the Web site or unsure if your children have accounts to begin with. There is a way to search for them on the site, but some people don’t put their real names in when they sign up. Go to www.myspace.com and click on “search” at the top of the page. You can search MySpace for a certain person’s name and that will take you to another page where you will notice in the top right corner that you can search for someone specific by name, email or display name. Again, some people don’t sign up with their real names, but if you know your child’s e-mail address you can find them that way. Occasionally the page will tell you that you have to log in to use a certain feature.
Another idea is to just ask your kids. If they aren’t doing anything to be ashamed of, they will probably tell you that they have a MySpace account. After all, it is possible to stay safe on the Internet.
“It’s about parental control,” Jack Hodges said. “If your kid is hiding up in their room on MySpace they are probably going to do stuff that you don’t like. But if they are where you can see the monitor anytime you want to look over… everybody wants to point fingers and not take any blame.”
In the end, there doesn’t need to be blame thrown at anyone. It isn’t MySpace’s fault that people want to post inappropriate pictures or that people have been using the Internet for years to try to harm others.
There are ways to stay safe. Most youth and 20-somethings set their preferences so that only people on their friends list can read blogs they have posted, and sometimes only friends can view their entire page.
“I have my blogs set to private,” one user said. “The blogs are like diary entries and I don’t want people I don’t know to have access to them. But my likes and interests can be read by browsers. I really like MySpace. I have found friends from high school and have kept in touch with people I haven’t seen in years.”
Detective Sgt. Jerry Womack of the Cedar City Police Department said that there are viable ways to keep kids and teens safe while on the Internet and sites like MySpace.
“Keep the computer in a place where everyone can see it,” he said. “That removes temptation to do anything that they shouldn’t. Parents can install software to monitor the history, and if they have the software they just need to use it.”
Womack spoke of the Internet in general, but because of the recent media attention MySpace has been getting he had some advice about that site as well.
“I haven’t really had much experience with it myself, but my kids have used it and if used appropriately it is probably no different than any other program you can use to chat,” he said. “But kids get on there and post pictures and give out personal info, and predators go looking for that. It makes it pretty tough.
“Just be aware of what your children are doing on the computer,” he continued. “We used to teach stranger danger, and (now) people buy laptops. Kids can go into their rooms and invite a perfect stranger into their own home and parents don’t even know. Parents should know and monitor.”