What Parents Need to Know About MySpace

Social Networking is a term that has grown out of websites like ‘MySpace’ and ‘Facebook’. These networking sites were designed to allow users to communicate online.
Pros of using Social Networking sites:
1. Users can communicate at their convenience. If your friend is sleeping because it’s 2am, there’s no need to risk waking them with a phone call. Simply post on their wall or send them a private message and they’ll get the information you need to send.
2. You may not know someone who is selling a Wii, but your friend might. See your friend’s friends and see what they’re doing and find someone who has a product or service you need.
3. You may be new to the social life in a new city. But no worries, Social Networking sites are a great place to find parties, events, and tours. A few clicks, and you have a full calendar.
4. Mass messaging isn’t always easy over the phone. Letting a group of 15 friends know about an important life event – graduation, wedding, etc. can be time consuming if you call each person. On a Social Networking site, you can announce it to the world and avoid forgetting someone or missing them via the phone.
5. Prior to Social Networking sites, it wasn’t obvious who had a lot of friends. Just looking at someone didn’t tell you whether they were ‘popular’. Now, when you see someone in school or when you meet a friend at a party, you can instantly have a sort of social background done on them simply by logging into Facebook and searching their name. Kids who would never have appeared to be popular suddenly increase their social standing because their profile includes many friends and many activities.
6. Social Networking sites allow instant remodeling. If you don’t like the color of your site, you can simply change it by searching for a new background. There are also many applications available, so that you can express creativity via quizzes, games, challenges, and much more. Kids and teens starved for praise from their peers can receive it when their quiz or challenge is praised.

These pros are accompanied by some frightening cons, though:
1. Predators can pose as a child/teen and easily get access to schedules, blogs, and other information to terrorize children and teens.
2. Peers can bully one another simply with the click of a mouse. There are also many instances of friends who share each other’s passwords, and after a playground squabble, wreak havoc online by logging into one another’s sites and doing a lot of social damage.
3. Children and teens do not know everyone that will be viewing their information online and are often unaware of the consequences of posting extremely personal information in a forum read by anyone and everyone.
4. Children and teens with social phobias find that they do not need to overcome them to interact online and may withdraw further when confronted with in-person social scenarios.
5. As sites get more technologically complicated, parents do not know how to use these sites and so, are not able to protect their children online.


What’s a parent to do?
It is recommend that if children in the house are going to have a Social Networking account, parents do, as well. Children can be connected to parents by ‘friending’ them, thus allowing parents to view things children are saying. Here are some safety tips for protecting your kids while they’re using their Social Networking accounts:
1. Make it clear that if they want to keep something private, they should not post it online, because you will be reading what they post and do online. Suggest a journal for keeping secret thoughts and agree that though you will monitor online activity, you won’t violate their need for privacy if they keep that information in an offline journal.
2. Make it the rule that you always need to know their passwords to their Social Networking accounts. Also make the rule that kids are not reveal their passwords to their friends.
3. Talk with your kids about who they are connected with online. Ask them specifically ‘John Doe is listed as one of your friends, how do you know him?’
4. Be clear about the rule that if they don’t know someone, they should not friend them. Also: a friend of a friend is not a friend. Just because your child’s best friend knows them, doesn’t mean that they are a safe person to add
5. Use your personal site and test applications, games, quizzes, etc. that your child uses. Talk to your children about these applications/games and what they like about them.
6. Most important of all: limit your child’s use to a set amount of time per day or week. Kids who focus on the internet socializing may forget the real world relationships that could be infinitely more satisfying. Ensure balance and explain to your child why you limit their time on these sites.

Many parents ask us how they can learn to use Social Networking sites. We recommend you go directly to the source and use the help page of each site. Some sites even have video tutorials. Don’t try to bite off a whole site in one sitting, though.
Take it step by step and learn one new site usage method each day.

Good luck and Happy Socializing!


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