Thanks for stopping by! Hey, why don't you do what all the cool kids are doing and subscribe to my RSS feed? You know you want to, so go ahead, be bad, be very very bad... :) Thanks.
A report recently released by the North Carolina Attorney General states that MySpace has identified more than 29,000 registered sex offenders all members of the MySpace community. This is more than four times the amount News Corp, the owner of MySpace said they identified back in May. This news came to light during a hearing in front of the North Carolina state House of Representatives — which is considering a bill, already passed by the state Senate, that would require parental consent for children to join MySpace.
I don’t think this comes to a huge surprise to anyone who hasn’t been living under a rock for the last couple of years. For a sex offender, MySpace must be like shooting fish in a barrel.
I do think that some sort of regulations need to be put into place for not only MySpace, but all social networks when we are dealing with underage children. Though unfortunately, when law makers get involved they either go way overboard on the restrictions or they make laws that make absolutely no sense because they do not understand the internet, technology and especially social networks.
My question here is where are the parents? Don’t the parents have to take some sort of responsibility here when it comes to monitoring what their kids are doing in cyberspace? I don’t think I have the answers on this, do you?
Popularity: 2% [?]
Technorati Tags: MySpace, sex offenders, News Corp
Related Articles:
This question has been troubling me for years. It seems, in this day and age, that parents expect everyone else to do their job - like teachers, day care workers, and the government. Is it a good idea for a minor to have parental consent on myspace? Sure, but how would that be regulated? The government can do everything to protect our children, but at the end of the day it all boils down to good parenting. I am a 24 year old entrepreneur, and I owe my success to my parents and the way they raised me. I can only hope that one day people will realize they are a parent to their children…not their friend.
Both of my teenage children are on MySpace. You’d be surprised at how aware they are of predators. I mentioned to my 16 year old son that I’d read that around 50% of MySpace was adults and he quipped back something really funny (which for the life of me I can’t remember) but along the lines of “yes and what percentage of MySpace are pedophiles? You do the math”.
That said, both he and his sister have private profiles and we do have the “safety” talks.
I completely agree, This is an issue for parents, not for government.
It is not, nor should it be the job of government to legislatively replace for good parenting. Besides, it is a technical impossibility to get foolproof age verification. They can legislate away but when it comes to implementation, there just simply isn’t anything that can be done that would make sense for MySpace to inact.
Passing a law and holding MySpace responsible for a parent’s inability to govern their family just doesn’t make any sense. This is a client side issue for sure.
The focus of these debates should be how can we educate parents to enact better computer security measures and child access restrictions to online content.
Maybe there is a market for a child centric computer with all the parental controls built in. It would also have to be fairly kid-hack proof with some sort of external verification system to access the control settings.
“Hello I’m Chris Hansen Dateline NBC why dont you have a seat. Are you Sleezbagforsex169? These are excellent photos did you take these yourself?…
I think we can all agree that parents are ultimately responsible for their kids and how they raise them. I think part of the problem we see today is that before major headlines like this, many parents were unaware of the dangers of MySpace and the internet. They may have been aware of internet predators, but hopefully articles like this will wake people up to see how serious this issue is. I think parents need to be teaching their children safer internet habits at a young age. I know there are sites on the ‘net to help them do this successfully too. I know MySpace has a safety page, and there are also sites like NetSmartz411.org which teach parents way to monitor their kids. Maybe if an emphasis is put more on education we might be able to make the web a little safer for our children.
The government couldn’t solve this problem if they tried. Myspace needs to handle this before the government gets involved. I gotta believe they are smart enough to believe if they don’t get this fixed it is gonna hurt.
BTW: check out internet safety queen, http://internetsafetyadvisor.info/ an MBL pal, she is fanatical about this stuff. I sent her your link.
Regarding Novaman’s quote: “I think part of the problem we see today is that before major headlines like this, many parents were unaware of the dangers of MySpace and the internet.”
If a parent is that naive or clueless about the nature of sex predators/pedophiles, I am sure they are utterly clueless about parenting in general. I see a dismal outlook for future generations unless we can get this under control. I read an article the other day, in which a mother drove her son and his friend to a park to kill another kid. Are you kidding me?
Pedophiles have been around a lot longer than MySpace. Parents need to teach their kids about who they choose to spend time with whether they’re on the computer or at the mall.
A wise man once told me that the government should never be placed in the position to save idiots from themselves.
We have laws and regulations that are meant to protect us, but criminals continue to be criminals because, you guessed it, they don’t care about those laws to begin with. Yet we spend millions on enforcement and a pittance on education.
The issue here is with the parents, but its in two parts. One, some parents are becoming increasingly apathetic to their children’s behavior. Many parents simply don’t care about what their kids are doing, taking the mentality “So long as they’re happy it’ll be OK.” Two, lets give some of these people the benefit of the doubt. Many of them know next to nothing about social networking and the pitfalls and dangers it may represent. We are over exposed to this environment and have these types of conversations everyday. Most parents don’t and are oblivious to what’s going on. Its not for lack of caring but a lack of exposure.
In any case parents need to know as much about what their kids are doing as their children do. Get involved, get educated and for God’s sake know what your kid is doing online. For my daughter we will have the “No Password, No Access” policy. If I don’t know her password for the account then she won’t have access to the internet. I’m not saying that I would use it, she’ll just know that I could. Of course she’s one so I hope to have the sniffers installed by the time it becomes an issue.
I disagree with most of you. It isn’t just a matter of uninvolved parents. To think so is utterly naive.
Sexual predators - or more specifically pedophiles learn tricks of the trade to get by MySpace guidelines, school officials, religious authorities, and, yes, parents. Only so much can be done to prevent them from getting through. Putting this just on poor parenting misses the point. MySpace and other social networks by their very nature pose risks (along with great rewards). And it will be up to MySpace etc. to be constantly vigilant (just as parents must be) to lessen the dangers for children.
If it appears that MySpace is unresponsive to these type of threats (and I’m not saying that’s the case) then the government will take action.