If you have teenage children, MySpace gives you a lot to think about. Alarmists decry MySpace as a pedophile’s Rolodex. Civil libertarians extol the site’s open exchange of information. As the father of teens, my initial reactions tended toward the alarmist.

I started tracking MySpace last year after reading how it was fast becoming the hot venue for a new crop of bands. It was a place for new acts to break out and gain fans. Parents of teens will recall when we called these “garage bands” and the only showplace was the local dive on a Friday or Saturday night.

MySpace is primarily a “social network”, allowing members to post personal pages about themselves, set up blogs (on-line diaries) and show photos. The idea was to allow people from all over the world to connect, share and relate. That was a nice idea. Two disturbing trends have blown it for MySpace.

First, there’s a strong bent toward MySpace being a “hook up” site, a singles bar for the Web set. Prurient eyes will revel in the onslaught on provocative, even seductive, photos of members. If the photos were strictly of consenting adults, that would be fine. But, MySpace is dominated by teens and photos of teens. MySpace does not allow and will remove photos that include nudity, but suggestive photos are allowed. James Verini’s article in the March issue of Vanity Fair provides an extreme view of the “hook ups.” The article paints a picture of sexual conquest, deviancy and excess. You can’t help but be exposed to this on the site. Pages include random photos of other members. Clicking the “Browse” link lets you search for people by age, gender and location. The site oozes a “get it here” tenor.

Privacy Ignored

The second disturbing trend harkens to a central theme of Internet privacy: don’t provide too much personal information on the Web. Caution has been cast to the wind on MySpace. The registration process asks for your full name, location and birth date. By default, this information is linked into your profile or searchable on the site. It makes it easy for teens to find others in a particular city. Those who prey on kids have the same access, though. MySpace tries to control this by only allowing kids 16 and older to be shown during a search. I found kids I know that are not 16 but show up as 16 or older because they’ve changed their birth date.

There are also kids who set their age to 101 or 102. But they are the exception instead of the rule. The teen invasion of MySpace has torn down years of teaching people to be careful with the information they put on the Internet. Instead, there are young kids putting volumes of information out for the public to see.

What To Do

The lure is strong. They have friends who are on MySpace. They may have heard about a new band that “everyone is listening to” that has a MySpace area. As a parent, I wouldn’t take a child to a glitzy pick-up bar just so they can hear “their” band. MySpace and a bar aren’t that much different. I’d recommend keeping kids off the site for now.

If they are already using it or you’re not comfortable restricting their access to sites, help them be safe. Have them show you their personal “site”. Don’t let them post their full name. Set their site to only be accessible to people they invite to their site. Talk to them about the types of information they put on their site. Find out if they really want the world to know all the things that they’ve made available.