Social Networking Sites

Today’s safety topic will begin to cover social networking sites. There’s a lot of debate as to whether these sites serve any purpose or simply create more safety problems. I’m not going to get into the social reasons behind social networking in this post, and they are fascinating, but I’ll cover the basics.

Let me begin by saying if your child is under the age of 14 he/she should not have a Myspace or Facebook account. There are, however, many appropriate social networking sites for younger kids, which I will discuss in detail. I’m going look at each site specifically and tell you what features they have and what they allow people to do while on them. Quite often I get the question, “why would you want to put up for the whole world to see pictures of Fill-In-The-Blank?” and again, I’ll have to tackle that in another post.

Myspace.comRequirements:
A working e-mail address, 14+ years of living

What if offers:
A "space” to put the following information:
A “name” of your choosing, for instance “HopeprefersFacebook”
A quote of your choosing, mine is from E.E. Cummings, “unbeing dead isn’t being alive” (Cryptic,right?)
Your age
About Me section (Who are you, some are very creative)
Who I’d Like to Meet section (Some people put dead philosophers, some put Paris Hilton.)
An Interests section that includes these subcategories: General, Music, Movies, Television, Books, Heroes

“Details” section:
Your sexual orientation, your relationship status, your thoughts on children (i.e. do you want them, do you have them etc.), Why you are on myspace (to meet friends, to date, etc.) Religious preference, Ethnicity, Body Type (It gets a little ridiculous here,) education, occupation, income (!!!), your zodiac sign, do you smoke/drink.

Top Friends Section:
This section is oh-so-important for the social status of high school and junior high students as it is a way to publicly express who your “favorite,” bestest friends are, for the whole world to see. Reputations are made and broken based on the “top eight.”

In addition to the basic features, users are also able to add features like picture slide shows, custom backgrounds (a major difference between myspace and facebook), and other applications to their pages. Applications are unlimited and include anything from a countdown to your birthday or wedding, a quote-of-the-day from Einstein, or karaoke!

You also have a pictures and video section, separate from your main page. Myspace users create albums, which they can share with friends, keep private, or “tag” other Myspace users in the pictures. To tag someone in a picture means that you label them in that particular photograph.

Comments Section:
This section, like the top friends section, is also important to the fragile social statuses of our teens and tweens. Comments simply mean that other myspace users can comment on your page. A typical comment conversation may look like this: “Hey, how R U? I haven’t seen u in 4EVR!” To which that person responds on their wall, “I’m gr8! How R U?” And so on and so forth. Again, you’re probably wondering what is the point of having a public conversation, and all I can say (for now) is it’s a way to publicly establish who your friends are.

Blog:
We haven’t touched on blogs yet, but now is as good a time as ever. What you’re reading right now is a blog, which is short for weblog, and is the Internet equivalent of a journal or diary. Blogs have entries organized by dates with the latest entry at the top of the screen.

Blogs can be about anything from politics to weddings, to a new baby, I’ve seen them all. Generally speaking, they are meant to bring knowledge about a particular subject into one "location," and can serve as an excellent way to sift through the huge amount of information out there today. Myspace accounts also have a blog option.

Generally people post new or changing information about their lives. Like for example if you get a new job, you post a blog entry about it. Another purpose of the myspace blog is ranting. Do you hate when people fill-in-the-blank? Well why don’t you blog about it?

My Bulletin Space:
The bulletin space is unique to Myspace. It serves as a virtual bulletin board where myspace users post information, which then is available to their entire Myspace network.

Most often these bulletins do not contain any “useful information,” however if you’re an artist you can place your show schedules and c.d. release information.

Most often bulletins are “surveys,” like the ones that used to be popular with e-mail. These surveys ask all sorts of random question and are mostly used to pass time when users are bored. I know it’s hard, but try not to make any judgments about the huge amount of wasted time kids spend on here; it won’t convince them to stop using it.

Groups, Events, Etc.:
Another feature of many social networking sites is groups and events. You can create a group based on characteristics that make you similar to other users. I belong to a Livingston High School Class of 2001 group and we will use this group to plan our reunion in a few years. Groups are neat because they can link people together based on their interests.

In addition to groups you can create events. This is sort of like the virtual equivalent to birthday party invitations. Say you’re having a volunteering event you can invite certain friends, groups, or your entire network to this event.

Safety and Privacy features:
Myspace has really increased safety and privacy features in the wake of events such as Megan Meier’s suicide and other cases involving users’ Myspace pages. In addition to a Privacy page, they now also offer a Safety Tips page with- get this- safety videos!

These videos are aimed at parents and cover a variety of issues such as phishing scams, how to create or delete a myspace account, and a PSA on cyberbullying from the Ad Council (See my blog post 5/23.) They also have a Q&A session and a video about monitoring and accountability software.

If you are under 18 on Myspace, your privacy settings are automatically set so that no one can see your profile unless they’re your friend. Along those same lines, no one over 18 years of age can search for myspace users under 18 years of age and vice versa. This is Myspace’s way of deterring online solicitation.

For Parents:
This specific section is for parents and educators and here myspace talks about why kids have myspace pages as well as some positive things that are happening through social networks. They also talk about cyberbullying and give parents a way to contact Myspace.

In addition they created two pdf handouts for school administrators and parents that I’ll put on our website.

I’ve noticed that generally speaking, Myspace is much better about communicating with parents and educators than Facebook is. I wonder if this is because younger children seem to use Myspace over Facebook.

Next entry will cover Facebook, and I promise it won’t be nearly as long.