MySpace On Adult Restrictions To Protect Teen Users
Starting next week, MySpace, the popular online hangout, will make it harder for strangers to send messages to younger teenagers. MySpace.com is planning new restrictions on how adults may contact its younger users in response to growing concerns about the safety of teenagers who frequent the popular online social networking site. In the shadow of a string of recent high-profile incidents involving teens and older users, the popular social networking site is planning to roll out a series of new rules that will restrict how some of those friends can interact.
The site, which has more than 70 million members, has been under pressure because members are frequently subjected to lewd or inappropriate messages and occasionally lured into dangerous real-world encounters.
The site already prohibits children 13 and younger from setting up accounts and displays only partial profiles for those registered as 14 or 15 unless the person viewing the profile is already on the teen’s list of friends.
The new plan is “MySpace users who are 18 or over could no longer request to be on a 14- or 15-year-old’s friends’ list unless they already know either the youth’s e-mail address or full name.”(AP) Bascially, I can’t request my friend who is 15 years old age unless I know her email address or her real name. Older users sending a message asking to become friends with younger users will have to enter the recipients’ actual first and last names or their e-mail addresses, rather than simply their user names.
Any user will still be able to get a partial Myspace profile of younger users by searching for other attributes, such as display name. The difference is that currently, adults can then request to be added to a youth’s list to view the full profile; that option will disappear for adults registered as 18 and over.
Earlier this year, the website was criticised by parents groups and authorities, who said that the site was not doing enough to protect younger members. Earlier this year the site introduced adverts warning teenagers about the dangers of sexual predators on the web and appointed a security chief to oversee child safety on the site.
A 14-year-old girl in the US is currently suing the site after she said she was sexually assaulted by a 19-year-old who she met on MySpace. The website says the new restrictions are unrelated to the case.
“Even with the new system, there are no restrictions on people who lie about their ages,” says CBSNews.com Technology Analyst Larry Magid. “If an adult says they’re 16, they can request to be a friend of a 14- or 15-year-old, Unfortunately they still don’t have reliable age verification.”
The partial profiles display gender, age and city. Full profiles describe hobbies, schools and any other personal details a user may provide.
However, MySpace has no mechanism for verifying that users submit their true age when registering. That means adults could sign up as teens and request to join a 14-year-old’s list of friends.
Since the purchase of MySpace’s parent company last year by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. for $580 million, the site has come under increasing scrutiny for a series of incidents ranging from teens posting inappropriate material about their teachers, to death threats and photos of illegal activities, which have led to bans from a number of schools citing fears about child predators. Of the site’s estimated 87 million users, more than 20 million are registered as minors.
MySpace, which was bought last year by News Corp. for $580 million, has recently become a target of parents, schools and law enforcement officials concerned that teens who visit MySpace can fall victim to sexual predators.
But I don’t think it’s going to work. Anybody including myself can sign up on Myspace and lie about my age. Since Myspace is free, anyone can have a myspace. What is the best way to crack down a pedophile from messing around with your kids?
Children’s safety online shouldn’t be left solely to services like MySpace, says Aftab, who offered tips earlier this year on The Early Show.
“Parents have to be involved. Ask their kids if they have a MySpace or other social networking page, tell them you want to look at it tomorrow, giving them a chance to clean it up,” Aftab told Storm Wednesday. “If your kids aren’t listening to you, and you’ve set rules that you like, it’s time to unplug the computer.”
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on Jun 22 2006. Filed under Women Diary, Women Lifestyle.
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