Is MySpace a safe Internet venue for teens?

No

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by J. Renda

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One of the newest debates appears to be about the safety of MySpace when concerning our teens. Unfortunately the world is more focused on sex than many of the other continuos problems that occur. As an adult it is very easy to get access to a teen's personal information. A countless number of predators are crawling all over the internet and MySpace inadvertanly provides the ease of creating a false account. Anyone can pose as a 16 year old.

MySpace boasts to undergo security measures and follow rules of conduct and terms of service in order to create a safe structured environment for their users. I myself have a different view of Myspace. They do NOT ensure the users follow the code of conduct or terms of service. None of this should be acceptable. We need to get MysSpace to reform their rules and their responsibility to enforce those rules. We cannot keep our children from trying to be social. The heavier consequences of those that are found to have committed misconduct online needs to be addressed in order to create a real sense of security or monitoring, not the false impression of monitoring that exists now. We need this as a way to protect our kids from predators and the sick fascinations that they have. Violent videos attract people with violent fantasies or a real violent streak for entertainment. Young, vulnerable mostly naked teens will attract the perversion of a predator. We need unification on this subject in order to protect their future. If a sick individual reels them in off of online into real life, they may not have a future left.

I have two teens that use MySpace. I try to monitor their computer use the best I can, but at times I have had to fly over the line in order to get answers. I ended up contacting MySpace to inform them to remove my daughter's account or to remove the inappropriate content off of it about two months ago. They in turn sent me an email with a 1-800 number and a code to be able to get through that expired with in 72 hours. Why would some one try to prevent me from having easy access to report abuse or potentially dangerous problem regarding an account. If she was being stalked or threatened would I want a long complicated set of measures and emails in order to be able to tell someone over the phone about it? This is an opinion article and the opinion is, that this is 'horse sh*t."

I posed as a 17 year old male in order for her to invite me to view her private profile. All I did was sit down for ten minutes and decide a fake name, home town, birthday , interests, and other personal information. I was not satisfied that the plan worked in fact all of us as parents should be weary now. If I can easily pose as a 17 year old male, though I am in my 30's, anyone can. Any sick and deranged man with sexual urges beyond the realms of normalcy can portray themselves as an innocent school kid with over sexed hormones that just wants friends or to date online a little. It is a frightening thing to know. They do not verify anything, they either can't or won't. It only took me fifteen minutes I'm sure a seasoned Sex offender may be able to do it in 7 minutes or less. Anyone can send you a message on MySpace or lie about who they are. There was a suicide of a 14 year old girl that was helped through harassment by an adult woman claiming to be a boy her age. We cannot make this stop without the help of MySpace and clearly they would not help me therefore how will you get them to help you? Will they decide what issues or more important? What is important to them if they will disregard teens exploiting their bodies, sexually inappropriate content, drug use and all this on tape on MySpace.

2 months later after contacting the MySpace Service Team, they still have not removed the content on her profile or revoked her account. At 16 yrs old she had posted home videos made by herself and friends. She and three friends made a video of them doing illegal drugs in front of a child under the age of 5 years old. It was very visible and clear and they were singing and dancing while they did it. They also had content of a few of the girls in their underwear and taking their shirts off. This is completely inappropriate and I cannot believe that Myspace did not take one smidgeon of responsibility to remove this smutty content. None of the girls were 18 years old. I informed MySpace of all the details and did not receive any measure of action. Unbelievable, that teens can exploit themselves physically and promote illegal drug use and child endangerment. We need to protect our children from predators, even the ones they refuse to acknowledge exist. Its imperative that we don't give up on them. All it takes is one person, one time, to take away the one we hold so dear to us.

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