Previous entry: 
Next entry:
MySpace cadets: how safe are they?
I recently filed an article for SunSentinel.com about MySpace safety. Here's how it started:
Do you know who all your kids' friends are? Do your kids know?Attorney General Bill McCollum is betting they don't, and that's just one of the challenges parents and children face when it comes to Internet safety.
"I go into a school and ask a class full of children whether they have MySpace pages," McCollum said. "They all have them, from sixth grade up. And I've never been to a school where there wasn't at least one student with more than 400 'friends.'"
Parents and children need to view friend lists on social networking sites with suspicion, McCollum said. "They call these people friends, but they don't know them."
Read the rest of the article here.
I'm a little bit worried about the amount of time our girls spend on MySpace, but mostly grateful that they both had the wisdom to set their pages to private so that they can only be viewed by their friends. The real issue, as far as I see it, is the fact that they have hundreds of MySpace friends.
McCollum's warning struck a chord with me as a parent, and I remember asking the girls if they personally knew everyone on their friend list. They insisted they did, but I have a confession: I didn't follow through. I didn't sit with them and go through their list, profile by profile, to make sure they knew everyone they were befriending. Should I? Would you?
I did want to pass on something helpful I stumbled on: The Kim Komando radio show put up a decent MySpace dummy page showing potential safety issues raised by the posting of private information. If you click on that banner above, it'll open that site in a new window. You may be surprised at how easy it is for your kids to post information that makes them vulnerable.
There's something else on that site, too: a "Ten Commandments" for kids online. It has you and your kids promising communication and cooperation when it comes to Web surfing.
Novel concept.
Gretchen Day-Bryant has a son in high school and a daughter in middle school. She’s lived to tell about the struggles of juggling little kids and work...
Joy Oglesby has an infant daughter and a sister 13 years her junior, whom she babies to the now-adult...
Cindy Kent Fort Lauderdale mother of three. Her kids span in ages from teenager to 20s...
Rafael Olmeda and his wife welcomed their first son in Feb. 2009, and he's helping raise two teenage stepdaughters...
Lois Solomon lives in Boca Raton with her husband and three daughters...
Anne Vasquez is the Online Editor in charge of overseeing SunSentinel.com. She is the mother of a 5-year-old boy and a newborn daughter.
Georgia East is the parent of a five-year-old girl, who came into the world weighing 1 pound, 13 ounces...
Brittany Wallman is the mother of Creed, 13, and Lily, 6, and is married...
Chris Tiedje is the Social Media Coordinator, and father of two boys and a girl all under the age of seven.
Comments
Solving internet safety online is a formidable task. There is a solution. www.Safewave.org has created iLAND5. The solution to safe social networking for kids ages 5-18 is to #1 start with the sign up process and lets' make sure we are dealing with just kids and not adults, that's where the schools come in to verify student identity. #2 create a network of websites of age grouped kids that helps reduce intimidation.
#3 provide an anonymous reporting function so the victim of cyber bullying is not threatened by retaliation. #4 build into the social network the most dynamic word filtering available on the net today that detects Kids language and where the kids help you update the language. #5 don't allow uncensored uploads or ability to copy profile information, Iland5 is content monitored, eyes on, 24/7. Now, take all of that and create an environment of "students for safer schools" within the network that empowers the children to resist, report and work together as a community.
With all that being said, add games, fun, storylines, comic strips and educational content and homework help and a way for the kids to provide ideas, apps, videos and you get www.iLAND5.com. A solution that can handle a large community in a safe and fun online network. Please take a look and ask others to do the same, it's all FREE.
Posted by: Jeanne | November 24, 2008 10:44 AM
I'll be sure to check that out. I wonder, though, if going through all those safety steps makes the experience less appealing for kids, like telling them to put down those ice cream bars and finish their spinach.
Posted by: Rafael Olmeda | November 24, 2008 12:48 PM