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Tuesday Apr 11, 2006
MySpace acts on parents' safety fears
According to CNET, MySpace will announce today the hiring of a former Justice Department prosecutor as Chief Security Officer. Their remit will be to handle all education, safety, privacy and law enforcement programs for MySpace.
How much information young people give out on MySpace has stirred up a great deal of concern amongst parents recently, but there seems to be a lot less debate about why young people are so happy using it.
Of course online networking sites should be safe for the young people that use them, but surely anonymity and confidentiality are key components (and something we value very highly here at YouthNet).
The more parents demand control over what their kids are posting the more they might end up alienating themselves from their children.
As one MySpace user said:
"Now, not because I don't trust Myspace, but because I feel my prvacy (sic) has been invaded by my parents, my blogs will cease to be personal. I feel I can no longer rant on here because I fear my parents are going to see it."
Obviously finding a balance between parental control and user anonymity is going to be really hard, but surely the process should start by looking at the pros and cons of socialising online rather than focussing purely on the risks?
Posted by Sam Thomas ( 12:35 PM ) Link to this post Comments[0]