Schools, Parents Cracking Down on Web Socializing

Web Sites That Bring Students Together Can Come Back to Haunt Them
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Technology/story?id=1519220

ABCNews
(excerpt) Jan. 18, 2006 — Tens of millions of young people — both college and high school students — increasingly rely on Web sites to make friends and contacts. Many of them have also learned that such activity includes some new and unexpected hazards.
When 17-year-old Mary Ellen Handy posted her name and picture on the social Web site myspace.com, she never thought her reputation would be damaged.
"This one girl basically recruited 20 girls to make my life brutal," she said.
Like so many young people, she was just looking to make friends online.

Instead, other users doctored her pictures and wrote damaging personal comments. Increasingly, students are surprised by the downside of posting on the sites.

Further down, the article states:
At least one federal employer looks at Facebook profiles before hiring college interns.

At Handy's high school, students must submit their Web site profiles to get a college recommendation.(more at the link)

I am astonished at what I've seen on some of these personal spaces for underage kids. I do enjoy looking at these sites when doing my amateur sleuthing though! :innocent:

What do you think about these personal spaces?

From the few MySpace sites I've seen (linked from various articles), I would not allow children of mine (I don't have any) to have a space there. What I am curious about, though, is how you can find out if your kid has one. Most people are using hats like we do here, and if you only know their real name, how could you find out if they have an account? TIA to any sleuthers who know how to search things like that.

I have a myspace!! 3 of my boys(they are all over 20) have them and I communicate with them and all their friends on there all the time. I really enjoy it and I learn a LOT about their friends this way.
But, like so many other things, it just gets abused.

SieSie said:

From the few MySpace sites I've seen (linked from various articles), I would not allow children of mine (I don't have any) to have a space there. What I am curious about, though, is how you can find out if your kid has one. Most people are using hats like we do here, and if you only know their real name, how could you find out if they have an account? TIA to any sleuthers who know how to search things like that.

Click to expand...

Sadly, a lot of them don't feel the need to be anonymous, even the few child movie stars spaces that I've seen have their real name listed somewhere.

You can usually search by gender, age, city, school name, first/last name, favorite music group, friends names, employer/company name...there are many ways you can find someone if you know even a little bit about the person. It's actually kind of scary that it's that easy.

When I was looking for info on Joran Van Der Sloot, I simply put in that I was looking for a male his age from Aruba or the Netherlands (can't remember now) on several of the personal websites...there he was. Then I was able to find his two buddies because they were right there too.

I found my own daughter by putting in key information and promptly gave her a huge lecture. She's 21 and should know better, especially after having a mom like me that is interested in crime-watching.

JBean said:

I have a myspace!! 3 of my boys(they are all over 20) have them and I communicate with them and all their friends on there all the time. I really enjoy it and I learn a LOT about their friends this way.
But, like so many other things, it just gets abused.

Click to expand...

They can be a lot of fun though! My daughter and I also talk to each other this way since we have different schedules. More fun than email.