MySpace is to hire Microsoft’s director of Consumer Security Outreach & Child Safe Computing next month, in response to the recent controversy surrounding the site and child safety. The site also deletes any profile whose user is lying about his or her age to appear older (users must be 14 years old to join MySpace), and the safety tips now urge parents to talk to their children about internet safety. These are steps in the right direction; awareness is key in protecting naïve teenagers who might think that meeting people online is always safe.
But this section goes further to include information about monitoring software, and clear, parent-proof instructions on how to delete your child’s profile.
Now I’m no parenting expert, but if Mom and Dad have to snoop and spy on their children, maybe the problem does not lie within the online community but within the parent/child relationship. To me, this is the online equivalent of reading a teenager's diary--maybe actually talking directly to one’s child would negate the necessity to snoop.
After all, common sense should carry over to the internet--you wouldn’t meet up with an online stranger, just like you wouldn’t get into a stranger’s car on the street. Just as parents teach their kids the latter, they should teach the former as well. And that’s not to say that parents should not be aware of their child’s whereabouts or activities--I of course am no one to tell people now to raise their children--but secretly recording emails, IMs, blogs, and stealing passwords? It seems a bit excessive.
Leslie @ Wed, 04/12/2006 - 1:15pm
I agree - parents should not be snooping around but actually talking to their kids. It's good that parents want to stay updated but invading your kids' privacy doesn't exactly put you on their good side, let alone have them confide in you. My mom read my diary once.. and I wanted to just die.