<p>I keep reading warnings about My Space, and one of my children is a “My Spacer.” Anyway, do you monitor your child’s my space activities, and should you? Are there rules that parents should enforce about my space? And if so, how does one enforce them? I am totally clueless here . . .</p>
<p>The simple and effective solution is to sign on to MySpace yourself and become “friends” with your child.</p>
<p>It is probably no more dangerous than any online social activity. Most kids know how to handle themselves safely. Make sure that your child is one of them.</p>
<p>mstee~</p>
<p>I have been VERY fortunate in that none of my kids is very “blog oriented.” My oldest uses the computer for necessities, such as schoolwork and such and my second does the same. My third (a D, 15) would be the most inclined to keep a xanga or MySpace site, BUT through her experiences in lurking on them (the ones that her friends/acquaintances keep), she has come to her own conclusion that they are really NOT a very good idea. Of course it helps that she’s seen some pretty bad things happen as a result of these sites, including my losing a best friend of 10 years over a blog (that her D kept…when MY D became concerned over some writings mentioning suicidal thoughts, and I brought them to her mom’s attention, she came UNGLUED and lashed out at me). I did allow my D to keep a xanga for a very brief period—all she talked about were theater activities and such–but she got bored with it quickly.</p>
<p>If my child were to keep a MySpace blog, I would definitely want it to be composed of things she wouldn’t mind my reading. For the brief period that my D kept that xanga, she had no problems with my having access to it, not that I really ever bothered to read it as I totally trusted her with it due to the MANY discussions we’ve had on the subject.</p>
<p>Rules to enforce IMHO: 1.) No “real” names, phone numbers, or other identifying info., 2.) I’d even be careful about posting pics, though many of the kids do this, 3.) If possible, make it “friends only” so that random weirdos cannot access it, and 4.) Absolutely prohibit the mention of ANYTHING that could be misconstrued or taken out of context.</p>
<p>As I’ve often said, I am not a “banner.” I believe that banning things has the reverse effect. However, I AM big on brainwashing <em>lol</em>, and I do it every chance I get. 
Blogs ARE something about which I have employed a great deal of brainwashing…and it’s pretty much worked.</p>
<p>In and of themselves, these things are not evil or horrible, but you DO have to be careful with them.</p>
<p>~berurah</p>
<p>I told my kids I can look at their myspace whenever I want, it is public, so I can look</p>
<p>There warnings to have to be aware of are</p>
<p>Strangers, on myspace, it is set up where public messages are from friends only, so your child should only talk to [eople they know</p>
<p>If a person they don’t know asks to be a “friend” the person can say no thanks…if a person sends a message, which is different from a comment, if the message is “bad” you can block the sender, and report to the myspace people</p>
<p>If there is anything offencesive, you can contact the myspace people</p>
<p>Be sure not to put last names, birthdates, maiden names, etc, </p>
<p>Myspace is like anything, it is not dangerous unless the user does stupid stuff</p>
<p>THe kids that get in trouble with myspace:</p>
<p>post bad pictures- drinking, scantily clad, provocative, doing drugs,
they make threats
they talk about parties, etc that happened and are going to happen for all to see
they talk to strangers, people they have never met, because they are lonely, want attention, hide stuff from their parents</p>
<p>You can make myspace private so ONLY your friends, people you have approved can look, send messages or make comments</p>
<p>I told my girls that I know how myspace works, I explored it, and they should have no problem with me looking at it anytime…it is not like listening to phone calls, myspace is public, so it is not an invasion (not that it should matter) of their privacy</p>
<p>I would tell my kid, if you want to myspace, you need to teach me how it works, how you keep it safe, who your friends are etc, and if I ask ,you need to let me look anytime with no griping, otherwise, no myspace</p>
<p>I am a trusting mom, and don’t look too often, but I think my girls knowing I can, and us talking about how not to be stupid, keeps them safe</p>
<p>It can be addictive though, that seven degrees of seperation thing</p>
<p>Just give them the safety basics as outlined by citygirlsmom and let them know you want to see it from time to time. You can do a basic search and find most peoples Myspace, including your kids and all their friends, with no problem (searching by school name or zip code works well). Although I’ve seen some questionable things written by some of the kids I know I don’t react because I’ve learned that being overly dramatic about things is par for the course for most teenagers :)</p>
<p>One scary thing I heard on CNN was that predators will go in and extract a teen’s picture, edit it to a nude body, and post it on a pornographic website. Not sure how they pick and choose a target or if it just happens when a stranger is corresponding with that teen.</p>
<p>D’s space is set to “private” and she says she only lets “friends” post. I haven’t seen it. I did manage to see one of her friends sites, one that is not “private”–it seemed pretty lame, as I imagine my daughter’s would seem-- I would just would like to be able to check in once in awhile, make sure nothing inappropriate is happening.</p>
<p>It’s a new age. Kids no longer have to use the landline phone to converse with my kids. And while her myspace is “private” in the sense that I, the parent, am not seeing it, it is not “private” to others since it is posted on the internet. </p>
<p>Well, I’ll keep talking to her about it. Tks for the feedback.</p>
<p>
mstee~</p>
<p>How old is your D? </p>
<p>I think it is a good thing that she has it set to “private.” To me, this says that she is not trying to “show off” to others…and by “show off,” I mean like some of the kids do here with regard to partying or drinking or whatever. A short time ago, my oldest D ran across the site of a girl she’s familiar with, and that girl, who has a dad who’s a local city councilman in our small town, had numerous pics of a drunken party in which there were VERY scantily clad girls (15-16), including herself, drinking Everclear, vomiting, and passed out on a concrete floor. I’m quite sure her parents would not have appreciated the fact that those were public and available for viewing by ANYONE. :eek:</p>
<p>My best guess is that your D’s site is VERY innocent and, as you put it, “lame,” and is not a big deal…my prediction, she will tire of it soon enough, like my D did.</p>
<p>Depending upon your D’s age, I would simply ask her if she minded if you looked at it. My D offered that to me as she knew I wasn’t crazy about blogs, and I think I looked at it once.</p>
<p>I definitely don’t think this is something to overreact to or make a big deal about…JMO. ~berurah</p>
<p>I think the media has caused a ton of unnecessary hysteria over the whole MySpace issue, personally. It is sweeps month, and when the news stations dont have anything newsworthy to report, why not playing off the viewer’s most fragile emotion: fear?</p>
<p>mstee, I’m not sure if this is an option, but another solution is to have an older sibling friend your MySpacing kid. It’s a lot less embarassing for the younger child, but their activity is being monitored nonetheless. This is actually the solution my parents and I worked out for my 14-year-old little brother. I keep an eye on him; he keeps in touch w. me; and everybody’s happy.</p>
<p>I think it’d be great if parents made Myspace pages and were in their children’s friends lists. That might a) show strangers that the child isn’t unsupervised on the site and b) stop friends from posting inappropriate comments on a page.</p>
<p>You all might like MySpace. I created a page in MySpace and Facebook to “claim” my name after reading that some students were creating pages in the names of professors and administrators as jokes. I wound up reconnecting with high school and college classmates.</p>
<p>Not hype, Vyse. My D’s close friend was discovered on MySpace by someone who claimed to be a teenager overseas. That made the friend feel secure in communicating with the guy. Low and behold, the overseas “teenager” is all of a sudden supposed to be right in her area. It’s a good thing the parents found out about this and put a stop to what could have been VERY bad news. </p>
<p>I do think that the hype has served a very good purpose, and that is to alert both teens and parents to the dangers that do exist. It used to be far more common for MySpace accounts to be totally public. Now you see more and more accounts are open to friends only. It’s also very true that even a year ago, the comments and photos you’d see posted were far more inappropriate. I think the kids have gotten wise and are taking more of the private comments to their AIM, private messages and whatnot, where the really juicy stuff goes on!</p>
<p>I am still very leery of these sites for the younger teenagers, and repeatedly tell the kids that these are not the same thing as being entitled to a private phone conversation, in that anyone on the planet is not also allowed to eavesdrop on a private phone conversation. Oops, did I really just say that - never mind ;)</p>
<p>BTW, Sign me, Up Late and Hosting After-Prom Pit-Stop!</p>
<p>pip-pip–GREAT IDEA!–that idea might just work. I’m going to see if I can get the older sis to be a “friend.” Little sis might not mind that as much as she would me looking over her shoulder. Worth a shot!</p>
<p>Dean J–that explains something I was wondering about as I exploring myspace yesterday, trying to figure out how it works. I saw this on the help page: “How do we remove a teacher/faculty member’s false profile?” Okay, so now I know why that is there!</p>
<p>Berurah–I greatly admire the honest and open relationship you have with your children–thank you for all you have shared here and in other threads about your wonderful family and how you have fostered such a great relationship with your kids–it’s very helpful and inspiring. </p>
<p>Thanks all for your comments and insights. You have all been very helpful!</p>
<p>According to this article, educators in High School District 128 have adopted a set of rules that will hold students involved in extracurricular activities accountable for what they post on “MySpace” in an attempt to make the district community more knowledgable about student participation in internet activities and the teen blogging phenomenon in general. Parents and students must sign a pledge not to post any gross misconduct or offensive behavior that reflects badly on the school community.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-0605230128may23,1,6311879.story?coll=chi-news-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true[/url]”>http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-0605230128may23,1,6311879.story?coll=chi-news-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true</a></p>
<p>Berurah,
I totally agree with your comments about showing off… I know of a gal, around 17 who posted several pictures of herself at a party with a guy who had a gun in his hand. Another mom found it doing some random “auditing” of her own child’s on-line friends etc… these kids just don’t understand the danger of what they are playing with… </p>
<p>I told my HS freshman that I could see his space and IM logs anytime I wanted if he wanted to be able to use our computer/bandwidth… he ended up getting rid of his space cause he realized it was foolish. </p>
<p>Certainly I think the Facebook is very helpful for college kids… make new friends but keep the old approach to life… but I do not think that hs and ms kids need unlimited, unknown friends… IMHO</p>
<p>May I share observations as the mother of two teenaged girls?</p>
<p>It is my experience that it is critical to monitor what they’re doing AND to follow every link on their page, as well as to view their friends’ sites. My daughters have been instructed as to what is appropriate, what I will tolerate, and possible consequences from me and from the world. They are meticulous. HOWEVER, one of my younger daughter’s friends (13 at the time) had on her space pictures of all of their friends, captions with their names, and numerous references to the names of their school and the community that we live in. There were also comments on her blog about the fact that their school dismisses at noon on Wednesday and they go to a particular pizzeria after school. The point here is that YOUR child’s space may be just fine, but other kids whose parents aren’t so vigilant can endanger your child. I’m not a Paranoid Polly, but I do believe it was important to get those pictures off the friend’s site and to tell my daughters that no one, but no one is to post their pictures or identifying information about them.</p>
<p>Zooser’s comment about following links reminded me of something. </p>
<p>Some of your students are joining “groups” and blog rings on these sites. You might want to check out the groups they visit. The same article that talked about student creating pages to mock teachers talked about groups dedicated to promoting Adderall as a “study aid”. I did a search on MySpace and found three pages of groups with Adderall in the description. Scary to think that use among students is widespread and that it’s being “pushed” online.</p>
<p>I look around myspace, i check out other links, and friends as well</p>
<p>My Ds know I do, and I told them do not put ANYTHING in writing, on the web, nothing you don’t want your principal, your parents, your friends, grandma, potential contacts, etc.</p>
<p>My Ds school checks the sites sometimes and has called kids on what they have posted </p>
<p>My Ds both show me their sites, especially to look at prom pictures and jokes people send</p>
<p>My D also uses the bulliten parts to send out news - world events, issues, politics, etc…many kids look forward to her posts</p>
<p>A really good one she did was about Darfur, and Child soldiers in Africa</p>
<p>So there are some good things that myspace can be used for</p>
<p>B~ including my losing a best friend of 10 years over a blog (that her D kept…when MY D became concerned over some writings mentioning suicidal thoughts, and I brought them to her mom’s attention, she came UNGLUED and lashed out at me).</p>
<p>B~<br>
How sad that your friend couldn’t appreciate your genuine concern. </p>
<p>I wonder if your friend has ever realized that she would have been really angry at you if her D had committed suicide and you hadn’t brought your concern to her attention? Instead, she had a “no win” “lose/lose” policy with you – if you bring something to her attention about her kid, she gets mad at the messenger, yet if you don’t bring someting to her attention and something bad happens, she also gets to be mad at you. I wonder if she has ever thought about that??? </p>
<p>did this just recently happen. Is there no chance for reconciliation?</p>
<p>cgm: >>> My Ds school checks the sites sometimes and has called kids on what they have posted <<<<</p>
<p>I’m glad that more and more schools are holding kids accountable for what they post on these web sites. I think its great because many kids might ignore their parents wishes in this area, but might “think twice” if they knew that their school was also going to be issueing “consequences” for inappropriate postings. </p>
<p>On Dr. Phil yesterday, they had an employee post herself in myspace (she pretended that she was 15 years old – she looked very young!). She posted some provocative pics of herself (nothing naked, but definately sexy). Within a few days, she had a ton of responses from guys as old as 40+ all wanting to “meet her”, etc. It was disgusting to see how many predators are roaming web sites looking for young girls.</p>
<p>also on the Dr. Phil show: one mom made a phony myspace posting (calling herself “Candy Sweet”) and contacted her own sons to see how they would respond to a contact by a (supposedly) young hot girl. Both boys revealed info about themselves that identified where they live, phone numbers, etc. Boy, were they shocked to find out that they had been corresponding with their own middle-aged mom!</p>