Cyber Socializing
Are Internet sites like MySpace potentially dangerous?
By Marcia Clemmitt

Internet socializing has become hugely popular, and Web sites that help people meet potential dates, find new friends and keep track of old ones are big business. Hundreds of sites attract tens of millions of users, and more sites come online daily. Born along with the Internet in the early 1970s, online socializing has helped people worldwide link to others with common interests for conversation and. . . .

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Should Congress require schools and public libraries to block social-networking Web sites?

Rep. Michael Fitzpatrick, R-Pa. Sponsor, Deleting Online Predators Act. From remarks on House floor, May 9, 2006	Henry Jenkins Director, Comparative Media Studies program, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From interview posted online by the MIT News Office, accessed July 2006

Survival Tips for Online Socializing

In the long run, the Internet is good for teens, bolstering their social development, creativity and even writing skills. Dangers do exist, however, mainly caused by teenagers not understanding how easily strangers can access posted information.

There's clear evidence that writing and creating art, music and videos on the social Internet is building literacy and creative skills in today's teens, says Northwestern University Professor of Communications Studies Justine Cassell.

In the early 1990s, educators were concerned about seriously declining interest in writing by American students. But today, “we have striking evidence that kids are willing to write, when they weren't before,” a change that many analysts attribute to the popularity of e-mail, instant messaging and blogging, says Cassell. Today's teens even show sophisticated understanding of literary niceties such as tailoring one's writing style to suit the audience. “They don't use emoticons [symbols] with parents,” for example, because they “understand that's a dialect,” she says.

Benefits aside, however, dangers and misunderstandings also exist, exacerbated by the fact that kids have raced ahead of many adults in their use of Internet socializing tools, says John Carosella, vice president for content at the Internet security company Blue Coat. “We are the first generation of Internet parents, and we need to learn how our job has changed,” Carosella says.

Here are experts' tips for handling the online social world:

• Parents must learn how to use the technology, says Cassell. “At the very least, IM (instant message) your kids.” Parents who IM “report much less fear about the technology and more happiness because their kids keep in touch,” she says.

• Parents should play with Internet search engines “to learn how easily they turn up information and then share that knowledge as they talk with their children about Internet privacy,” she says.

• Privacy rules between parents and kids can't remain the same in an Internet world, says Kaveri Subrahmanyam, an associate professor of psychology at California State University, Los Angeles. “If it's a kid's diary, you don't look at it.” But diaries are different from MySpace pages, “because nobody else is looking at them,” Subrahmanyam says.

• When it comes to publicly posted information that strangers can access, “You do need to know what they do,” she says. “You can say to your child, 'I don't need to know the content of the IM, but I do need to know whom you're sending it to.' ”

• Age matters when it comes to teens understanding Internet privacy issues, according to Zheng Yan, an education professor at the State University of New York at Albany. Only children ages 12 to 13 or older can grasp the Internet's “social complexity,” such as the large number of strangers who can access information posted on Web sites.

• Web sites vary widely in how much public and private access they allow to posted material, and it's important to think about this when posting, says Alex Welch, founder and CEO of the photo-sharing Web site Photobucket. On Photobucket, the photo albums of people under age 18 are automatically kept private.

• However, even if they weren't, posting photos on Photobucket would be less risky than posting the same pictures on a social-networking site like MySpace, says Welch. That's because on MySpace photos are linked to additional personal information that may pique strangers' interest and provide clues to help them contact posters.

• It's also important to consider the future, including how employers or college admissions officers might view your online postings, says Henry Jenkins, director of the comparative media studies program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Much of what appears on the Internet today ends up archived somewhere and can be retrieved tomorrow, he says. “Kids don't recognize the permanence of what they put up there.”

• Adults will probably learn a lot about the Internet from their children, and they should be open to that, says Jenkins. Parents “need to recognize that some unfamiliar experiences look scarier from the outside than they are. Take time to understand what you're seeing.”

• Talking about teens' MySpace pages can open the door to family discussions of important, sometimes touchy issues, like contemporary fashion, media images and ideals, Jenkins says. “Ask your kid how they choose to represent themselves” on their MySpace pages “and why.”

• Teens — and adults — who socialize on the Web should remember that, “when it comes to the rules for getting to know people,” the Internet “parallels our world perfectly,” says Patricia Handschiegel, founder and CEO of StyleDiary.net, a social-networking site focused on fashion.

• Often, young people have “a false sense that you can't be tracked” by people they correspond with online, Handschiegel says. “If you want to correspond, fine, but take your time getting to know people. Watch for cues” to ulterior motives, “such as somebody pushing too fast to know you.”

[1] Bruce Bower, “Growing Up Online,” Science News, June 17, 2006, p. 376, www.sciencenews.org/articles/20060617/bob9.asp.

Footnote: 1. Bruce Bower, “Growing Up Online,” Science News, June 17, 2006, p. 376, www.sciencenews.org/articles/20060617/bob9.asp.