Some of the reasons why everyone is so concerned about safety is that MySpace is wide open.  Rumor, gossips and photos worthy of bribing are openly displayed all across young user’s profiles.  The bad news is that someone who is made fun of for being fat will see it loud and clear across the website, it won’t be hidden behind their back in order to save face.  While this proves confrontational for teens, the good side of this kind of behavior on MySpace is that, because it’s out there in wide-open space, it can be addressed straight on.

Parents can visit their sons’ and daughters’ spaces on the web and can also surf their way from their own children’s pages to the pages of their friends.  In this way they can check out their children’s friends.  While most teens find this an absolute invasion of privacy, they’re not making their profiles private either.  Never have teen’s voices been so unabashedly out there for everyone to hear their rampant, swear-ridden, speech.  Most would not advice parents to go on to their children’s web pages, but simply because it’s an invasion of a teen’s privacy.  Their profile, after all, is certainly not meant for you!  However, another suggestion, perhaps an even better one, is to not go to your child’s MySpace page simply because it will be a shock that will take a lot of time to recover from.

While it’s not necessarily advisable to go onto their websites, it is certainly a good idea to review with them, and often, the basics of personal security.  For example, having one’s street address or telephone numbers on one’s profile is not a good idea.  Although there have not been a lot of huge problems arising yet from total strangers stalking kids based on their MySpace accounts, hopefully the key word in that phrase is not ‘yet’.  It is entirely possible that troubled people would go to MySpace as a means of finding virtual friends; after all, that’s one of the intentions of the social networking website.  However, this sort of behavior can end in really nasty ways, escalating from posting inappropriate comments to stalking by IM and email and perhaps even into physical stalking.  It’s not unthinkable with the amount of information that, especially teens, put on their MySpace page.

These are all good reasons to take security on websites such as MySpace very seriously.  There are the technical issues of protecting oneself from adware and spyware that can potentially harm your computer in very serious ways, but there are also more personal threats that can become severe over time.  Make sure that you take your own security into account while on MySpace, and look out for your friends as well.  Just because you haven’t posted your own personal address doesn’t mean that one of your friends isn’t going to post your address when inviting an entire friends’ list (by way of a bulletin) to a party at your house.  Looking out for your friends is just as important as looking out for yourselves.  As parents, teachers, community members, and as citizens of the world, it’s time to make sure that children are growing up not only with security for the real world, but that it also applies on the internet.  “Don’t talk to strangers” isn’t just a good rule of thumb for walking down the street; it goes for traveling the digital highway as well.

Related posts:

1. Top Tips on Communicating with People on MySpace.com
2. MySpace – Beefing Up Security to Protect Teens
3. Terrific Tips to Browsing Within the MySpace Kingdom