I was just watching the news and saw a piece warning parents about the evils of MySpace and other such sites. Not only are there sexual-predators, but the students themselves are posting sexually suggestive photos of themselves, as well as photos of youth doing illegal things.
So, what is the solution? I don't know. When I was in high school, I was taking most of my classes at the local college, so I was driving back and forth between the buildings a couple times a day. At the college, I just went to the computer lab and checked my email on Hotmail. At the high school, it was blocked. That was really frustrating. I would imagine that most schools probably block sites like MySpace as well.
But will that solve the problem? What exactly is the problem? Childen are making themselves vulnerable to abuse from adults and other youth. Some students also use the web to threaten others.
I don't think that there is a way to keep kids off these sites. Some might argue that the site should just be shut down, however it serves many adults well. Also, the web being international makes it impossible to shut down such sites even if someone wanted to do so.
Perhaps the best thing to be done is to educate both parents and children about both the dangers and advantages of such sites. Make sure that kids know that it's dangerous to post pictures because they can often be identified by predators and the police. Also tell them such simple things as that posting a zip-code provides more info than posting a town name (I know a kid who had this in a web profile: City: I won't tell you! ZIP: 55414).
It seems pretty clear from attempts to keep kids off drugs and from dangerous driving, that trying to keep the kids from the danger doesn't work. You just need to educate and hope that the kid has been brought up savvy enough to know what to do with the information.
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Kids that post nude pics of themselves or other illegal material are suffering from a lac somewher else in the home or at some aspect of their life. I personally believe if, like you said, parents eduacate their children of the dangers of such websites then we'll see a difference. Just like talking to your kids about drugs, why would they be curious enough to try it when they heard about it from you. Funny thing is 9 times out of 10 mommy or daddy talking to son or daughter is all that the childs wants and needs in the first place because most kids use such sights to be heard and for somone to act like they understand their problems. Shutting down the sights isn't going to help anything. Letting the kids know that daddy thinks the sight is cool but daddy also thinks that it could be dangerous too, might help.
Jamie
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