Internet 'friends'

So says one self-described 17-year-old girl in Saratoga Springs whose favorite team is the Blue Streaks, her favorite magazine, Cosmopolitan, and whose future mate would be 'a boy who would beat the crap out of someone if they called me fat.'


The writer is one of hundreds of teens in Saratoga County and millions of people everywhere who are using the Internet to talk to friends, make new ones and bare their souls to total strangers.

But who's real and who isn't?

'The problem is that kids have this false sense of security online,' said Joseph Donahue, a State Police investigator who works in the Albany headquarters of the Computer Crime Unit's ICAC (Internet Crimes Against Children) Task Force.

'If they're not meeting people face-to-face, they feel like they're 8 feet tall and bulletproof. They feel nobody can bother them, but that's naïve and makes them much more vulnerable.'

What has raised the concern of law enforcement is MySpace.com. Since it was launched three years ago, the Web site now counts more than 60 million members, and is growing daily. The majority of those congregating are teenage girls, according to Donahue.

The secret to its popularity is in its simplicity. With an e-mail account, users can join up and create their own personal pages, post photographs, movies, music and share diary-like commentary with the world.

Using the site's extensive search engine, millions of users can be found around the globe, sharing like-minded interests.

Thousands of online friends are in the Saratoga region alone, and they find one another by school name or any number of area clubs. Many sites share frank discussions and photographs.

'You can pose as anyone you want online and there's all kinds of scams predators can use,' Donahue said.

'Come summertime, they'll be online claiming to be kids. 'I'm a new student,' they'll say. 'Who's a good teacher?' They have learned to use technology very well.'

Personal info online

Too much information is being offered for 'the bad guys,' Donahue believes.

Here, for instance, is an excerpt from a site that was easily located by this reporter, with the names deleted but the punctuation and grammar kept as it was posted:

'My name's xxxx xxxxx. i live in toga, new york and im 15. i row. its like my life. i love shopping and going to the movies and hanging out with my friends. my best friend is xxxxxx xxxxx. ive known her since i was 4. I love summer. i have a house on lake xxxxxxx.'

The writer describes herself as straight, 5'5', white, a Virgo, and a high school student in the Class of 2008 who'd like to have children some day.

Although dangerous cases related to MySpace are few, entries loaded with personal information worry law en-forcers.

'The old notion of a predator hiding behind a tree wearing a raincoat is a thing of the past,' Donohue warned. 'Today, they don't have to worry about being seen. They can safely stay online and slowly groom the child fairly anonymously.'

In March, a 48-year old California man was booked for investigation of attempted lewd and lascivious conduct with a child he thought he was meeting on MySpace.

A 22-year-old New York City man and 39-year-old Pennsylvania man were both arrested on allegations they had illegal sexual contact with minors they met through the Web site. And according to The Middletown Press, police in Connecticut are investigating seven cases of sexual assault of minors by alleged MySpace predators.

A few years ago, it was chat rooms that posed the most concern.

Today, the popular places for people to congregate are Web sites like Xanga, FaceBook and MySpace. Many people post their birthdates and name clubs they belong to, as well as likes, dislikes and goals. They describe where they work, what they do and where they go for recreation. Many use their real names along with identifiable photographs, some of an intimate nature.

'Don't U wish UR girlfriend was hot like me?' asks the self-professed 26-year-old 'Sexy Bitch from Stillwater' posing in her underwear.

'Uncle John' goes to Saratoga Springs High School, Class of '08, and has a fixation for the music of the Grateful Dead. He posted a message about everyone coordinating to take a specific day off from school. He wasn't starting the idea he said, only asking if anyone had heard the circulating rumor. 'Think about it,' he wrote. 'Teachers show up and nobody in class.'

Another group from the same school call themselves 'Reefer Tokers of Saratoga Springs.' It is a group small enough to gather for a photograph in which they smile back at the camera with bottles of beer and what appears to be a handgun.

While Donahue hears from parents who are concerned about photographs of minors who are posing with alcohol or drugs, he said it is difficult to prove that laws have actually been broken.

'A lot of the problems that parents complain about are really parenting issues,' Donohue said. 'They say, 'There's a naked picture of my 15-year-old daughter on there' -- but it's their daughter. Parents can be ignorant. They go out and buy a $500 computer, throw it in the kid's bedroom and forget about it.

'The kids don't realize that MySpace is not 'Their Space' -- they're out there in the public domain. It's not private, it's not their own little environment,' Donahue said. 'What goes on there goes up worldwide.'

Teens feel protected

Some area teens with MySpace sites say they are aware of potential dangers and have taken steps to protect themselves.

'Almost everyone has it,' said Casey Slone, a sophomore at Saratoga Springs High School, who put up his site last summer. 'I used it a lot when I first started, but these days, I just check it out if I get a request.'

Requests come in for people wanting to be 'friends.' Users then have the option to either 'invite' the friend in, or to refuse.

Users also have the option of choosing whether to make their site private -- where only a select, invited list can enter -- or public, where anyone can join.

'I don't take requests from people wanting to be a friend from anybody who is not from Saratoga because you just don't know who to trust out there,' Slone said. 'I keep a message board for people to say hello and I used to have pictures up but I took them down because I heard about a lot of the dangers from teachers and parents.'

K.C. Conway is an 18-year-old senior at the school who discovered the site as a good resource for his band. He started his site in December and counts 82 friends among members.

'My parents say it's OK'

'The good thing is you can meet new people and make new friends,' Conway said. 'My parents know about my site and they say it's OK as long as I don't put up a picture or my real name.'

Maddie Choppa, a junior at the high school, set up her MySpace account in November.

'Mine is public. That way, my friends from school can find me on there,' she said.

'It's a good way to get to know your classmates better. People put up posts and surveys go around, but all of my friends are people that I know,' Choppa said. 'My experience has only been good. If you find provocative pictures, you can report them to MySpace headquarters and they will take care of that.'

At Saratoga Springs High School, a block on the computers prevents students from logging on to MySpace at school.

'It is the new wave of communication for this generation,' said Principal Frank Crowley. 'I have received a number of complaints from parents that there is a lot of personal information that students are including that could reveal personal information to the wrong people. For security reasons, we're very concerned about the information people are putting up on that site.'

So are parents.

'What scares me is that children seem to have this double personality,' said one mother whose daughter is a junior at Spa Catholic High School.

'You go on there and read that they say they're fat or ugly and that they lack self-esteem,' she said. She wonders what college and employment recruiters would think if they checked into an applicant's history of postings.

'They ask questions like: 'How many times have you had sex? When was the last time you got drunk?' When I saw this stuff I felt bad for these kids. It seems like they're crying out for someone to talk to,' she said, insisting her daughter take down her own site after searching the computer's history of sites she was visiting.

'There are pictures of kids from (area) schools at parties with beer bottles in their hands, doing shots of liquor, and some boys making remarks that were just rude,' said the mother. 'Are their parents oblivious to this garbage or do they just not care? There's no respect out there -- not for one another, not for religion and not with any morals. ... But my daughter thinks it's no big deal.'

'My mom didn't like it because of the swearing and some of the surveys that people took,' said the daughter, who is in her upper teens. 'MySpace is a good way of keeping in touch with your friends. I think if you're old enough, you realize what's sketchy and what's not. When you're younger than 16, you don't really know what's going on. But most of my friends have their sites set to 'private.' People need to make a request to be your friend.'

Grace Killion is a ninth-grader at the Waldorf School of Saratoga Springs. She has about 90 friends with whom she keeps in contact. Her 15-year-old classmate, Hannah Anteler, finds it a good resource to promote her band.

Both say they are careful about who they choose to be online friends.

'These are all people that I have met or have known for awhile,' Killion said. 'I think parents and teachers assume it's a dangerous place because there's that possibility of something happening. But kids can go private, and decrease the chances of something happening.'

Says Grace's mother, Carolyn: 'I don't look at MySpace any differently than I do sending your child to the mall alone the first time. You have to teach your child about other people, but then you have to trust them about what they have learned.'

Weighing the pros, cons

There are indeed two sides to these sites.

'MySpace is both extremely helpful and potentially hazardous,' said Richard DeMartino, psychologist at Saratoga Springs High School. 'On the one hand, it caters to the developmental needs of kids: Who am I? Where am I going?

There is the ability to connect, to belong and MySpace does a great job in developing that -- but with some of the information being so easily identifiable, they've just given this information to creepy people as well.

'The goal of teenagers is not to get hurt by somebody. It is to talk to people, and in the case of someone who may be shy, there is the ability to 'meet' people without having to have that face-to-face contact,' DeMartino said. As for the dangers, he said, 'There is a disconnect. They disassociate themselves from it. Kids tend to deny that it could happen to them.'

Lt. Gary Forward stood inside the Saratoga Springs police station trying to strike the delicate balance of being connected to the world and being protected from it.

'Kids are so trusting by nature,' said the lieutenant. 'In a perfect world, it would be a beautiful thing -- but this world isn't perfect,' he said. 'If it was, I wouldn't have a job.'

©The Saratogian 2006