Keeping Students Safe Online

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The Problem with MySpace
by The Forsite Group

The article I chose to review for this entry comes from an e-book from Tech Learning. The e-book is entitled "Keeping Students Safe Online." This issue was of special interest to me because my teen aged daughter and her friends frequent MySpace as a form of communication between them.

This article began by addressing the recent issue of sexual predators using MySpace.com as a trolling grounds for under aged victims. My husband and I frequently watch the Dateline show, "To Catch a Predator." We were very aware of the situation of MySpace being a target for sexual predators as a way of enticing teenagers. This article addressed this problem and ways that parents and schools were dealing with it.

MySpace.com is a "social networking" site. It is a place for people to communicate. It allows users to access blogs, instant messengers, and email all in one place. There are currently over 70 million users worldwide. MySpace is not the only social networking site on the Internet, there are many. These sites do not introduce new technologies or services, they simply make using existing ones more convenient.

Adults and teenagers utilize the Internet in very different ways. For adults, the Internet is a tool. They use it to check email, get information, and shop. Teenagers view the Internet as a place to hang out with their friends, especially for real-time communication. As many teenagers have grown up with the Internet, it is assumed that they know the dangers of it. Research shows that this may not be the case. In their online profiles, 70% have provided their first name, 67% have supplied their age, 61% have included contact information, and 59% have posted their location. These are some pretty alarming statistics. My husband, who is in the Criminal Justice program, recently went to a seminar on Internet predators. The speaker showed that just by searching for a zip code you can pinpoint find many unsuspecting teenagers. This is because that even if they put in fake information, the majority of teenagers include their correct zip code.

With the information that MySpace was being used by sexual predators, parents and school officials became alarmed. School districts faced many questions when deciding how to deal with this situation. The two main questions were, "Was MySpace the only threat?" and "Did they have cause to block it?" This last question was the most challenging. It was compared to banning books in school libraries. Every school district or library the receives federal funds must comply with the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA). This act states that images that are harmful to minors (children 17 and under) must be blocked. Because many MySpace customers post partially nude or nude photographs, many school districts decided to block the site. Some users got around this block by creating fake URLs.

MySpace faced new challenges when this problem arose as well. They did set an age restriction and you must be 14 or older to create an account; however, this does not stop a teenager from pretending to be older or a predator from pretending to be younger. They hired an industry to oversee safety, education, privacy programs, and law enforcement issues. They have also created protection programs to prevent strangers from contacting members under 16 and provided parents with links to free filtering software that monitors and limits Internet activities and access.

This article was a reinforcement for me of the dangers that do lurk on the Internet. The Internet was designed as a tool and has evolved to something much more. It has become a gathering place and a communication network. The solution to me is education. We need to educate our children about the dangers of the Internet, as well as the benefits of it.