Underaged Users Urged To Avoid Teen Web Site

Last week, unless you’re under 30 or have children over the age of 12, you probably knew nothing about the teen networking Web site called MySpace.com. This week, the site came blasting into the consciousness of adults in Connecticut when Attorney General Richard Blumenthal linked the site to several cases of sexual assault and warned parents to keep an eye on what their children are doing online.

MySpace.com, for anyone who has managed to avoid visiting it, is a phenomenon among teens, young adults and pre-teens that is as big as, say, the iPod revolution. According to a July article in Marketwatch, the space had at that time about 18.5 million members (most of them in the 16-34 age group) and was attracting two million new members monthly. It called the site the fifth most visited Web domain in the world. Although it has frankly dorky graphics and looks like the Web equivalent of a garage band, MySpace also has powerful financial backing: it’s owned by a company called Intermix Media, which was purchased last year (for $580 million) by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation.

How can a site that’s this popular, and this successful, be such a mystery to so many adults?

One reason: There’s no cost to use MySpace, so children don’t have to ask their parents to finance their memberships.

Another is that the site is not marketed or sold; it has grown mainly by word-of-mouth. In fact, it’s the tag-you’re-it nature of the site that has made it both so popular and so potentially dangerous.

When Web users sign up for MySpace, they’re immediately linked to a large network of "friends." The site has even spawned a new verb, "to friend" someone: Users cruise the site and look for other users who interest them; if they want to make contact they send a note asking permission to add them to their network, or "friend" them.

For a generation that grew up frantically collecting Beanie Babies and Pokemon cards, it’s an easy next step to begin "collecting" friends.

"You often see people’s listings on MySpace that say they have 15,000 friends," observed Emeric Harney, an 18-year-old Salisbury resident who has been on MySpace since its debut two years ago.

Although MySpace has tried recently to make it harder for users to communicate that widely, it’s the collecting aspect of the site that still appeals to many users — and that can create situations that might lead to sexual misconduct or harassment.

Hillel Lowinsky is a 21-year-old Millerton resident who joined MySpace because his girlfriend was on it. He is ambivalent about the appeals of the site but he is very definite in his opinion that other users (especially the youngest ones) put too much of themselves into their personalized MySpace pages. Or, rather, they’re putting too much of the person they want others to see them as on their spaces.

"They take pictures of themselves that misrepresent who they are," he said. "They make themselves more of an object than a person."

Terrence Shea, director of technology at the Berkshire School in Sheffield, Mass., agreed.

"The sites are really social currency," he said. "Kids post wild photos and exaggerated descriptions to get people to link to their profile. The more links, the more social currency you have."

At Berkshire, access to MySpace has been blocked until the students can be "educated" about its perils. Most local public elementary schools said this week that they block access to this and similar networking sites such as facebook.com. Notes were also sent home this week from several schools warning about what one parent called "lurking perverts."

Problems can also be caused by teens joining together in "groups" on such spaces that encourage behaviour that would be frowned on in the real (not cyber) world. The Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, for example, disciplined a group of students in January for using facebook.com to send racist messages. School administrators did not cut off access to the site or sites like it, but they sent students a warning that is more likely to discourage use of the sites than any hints of physical danger. The Hotchkiss students were warned (as were students at the Indian Mountain School, a Lakeville boarding and day school that goes up to grade nine) that college admissions officers and employers are looking up applicants on the Web and can gain access to sites that have been dormant for years.

Part of the appeal of the sites, perhaps especially for students who are in competitive boarding schools, where they have little to no privacy, is that these Web sites allow them to act out more than they can in real life.

"Young people have made [sites like MySpace] into a game," observed Helen Bray-Garretson, a psychologist who specializes in working with children at the Northwest Center for Mental Health and Family Services. "They say something and then they wait to hear back. They can be ‘naughty’ on MySpace or spaces like it without getting caught, especially by parents who are not as sophisticated technologically as their middle-school kids. There’s no sense of consequences."

Many schools are now warning youngsters of the potential dangers of these sites, even if they are not available on campus. At the Indian Mountain School, a state trooper told students he has a MySpace page where he pretends to be a 16-year-old girl. He uses it to track down predators who troll the space for users who inadvertently share information about themselves.

"Trooper Johansen told them not to put up their pictures or the towns they live in," said Karen Kane, associate director of communications at the school. "Even a school name or the fact that you’re on the tennis team can lead someone to you. Be more general: I like tennis. I live in the northeast. He cited an example of someone who posted a photo in front of her house, next to the family car. His take-away message to kids was that you can’t be too careful."

For older and more savvy users of MySpace, that advice might be enough. But, at least here in the Northwest Corner, many users of the site are underage. MySpace strongly discourages anyone under the age of 14 from becoming a member. On a page called "Safety Tips," parents are encouraged to tell MySpace if their underage child is on the site; MySpace will then delete their profile. The youngsters themselves are told, "If you’re under 14, MySpace is not the place for you. Go away."

This advice seems to be going unheeded by the youngsters themselves and by parents who are leery of cutting off an avenue of socializing for their youngsters.

"It’s like going to the mall," said one parent of an underage user. "You just have to warn them that, just like at the mall, there are a lot of fun things to do and people to meet but you might also meet perverts and creeps there and you have to be careful."

"In rural areas like this," said another parent of an underage user, "you’re afraid to let your kids go to someone else’s house or just go out and walk around town. With myspace, they’re conversing with someone, but that person isn’t physically there. It’s an avenue that used to be safe; but now, like letting your kid walk down the street alone, it’s not anymore."

One of the greatest dangers, this parent noted, is that youngsters can understand the danger of a man trying to snatch a child off the street. But the Internet doesn’t have the same threatening feeling.

"It’s abstract, it’s not a tangible thing," she said. "That’s where it’s harmful. It’s not like a knife or a threatening person. It’s someone, presumably a peer, who is talking them in a language that they understand, and they’re doing it from home."

Bray-Garretson confirmed that the youngest users of MySpace are unable to comprehend what they’re getting themselves involved with.

"Their full capacity for managing abstract thinking isn’t in place until they’re in their mid-teens, so for a middle-schooler on MySpace, I don’t think they can grasp the meaning of what they’re doing and how it relates to safety."

She also warned of the dangers of letting young people become comfortable in the protected world of cyberfriendships.

"The overarching issue is that having relationships via computer robs a child of having a real relationship, with that instant give-and-take," she said. "In some ways, the Internet is a substitute or escape from real-life social interaction."

She acknowledged that it will be difficult for parents to cut their children off from what is almost an addiction. As one young user put it, she rushes home from school to see if there is a message in her inbox — even if it’s two sentences from a classmate she just left 15 minutes ago at school.

Bray-Garretson recommended offering "alternative social activities that are compelling and that build mastery. And when they are on MySpace, parents should be able to check in and make sure they’re using it in a way that’s productive and healthy."

As for children who are under 15: "I would tell them, ‘no,’ they can’t use it."