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MySpace Fears, Just Another Backlash?
An anonymous reader writes "Wired takes a hard look at all the hype about MySpace being a danger to teens, and concludes it's just another backlash against technology and youth culture. The most damning evidence against MySpace are the recent cases of men arrested for dating underage girls they met through the site, but statistically these cases are a drop in the bucket. From the article: 'In fact, with a reported population of 57 million users, MySpace is arguably safer from such crime than other communities that haven't been the subject of the same scrutiny. One example: California, which averaged 62 statutory rape convictions per month in the late 90s, in a state population of 33 million.'"
my mom took my radio off me because she thought it was a danger. Of course I was using it to beat on the side of my brother's head at the time.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, technology is very rarely the problem. MySpace is by its very nature a social networking tool (of dubious quality, but that's another issue), and is meant to bring people together. What they do after that is a function of the people, not MySpace itself. And yes, sometimes these people meet through MySpace and then have underage sex.
Sometimes people meet each other through school and then have underage sex... I don't hear any claims that school is a "danger to teens". It's time we stopped blaming technology for merely giving people opportunities to show their moral fibre.
My, that was a yummy potato!
I think they have a quota. At least one station in every market MUST show the viewers/readers a way that the new society is 'bad' at least once a day.
Once a week, they all have to get together and show us the SAME story on some way that we can be kidnapped or killed.
"Dangers lurking in your sink! Details at 11!"
Now...back to the story at hand. Are some kids being fools on MySpace? Sure there are. These same kids would be fools anywhere. MySpace is just one outlet for them.
And we all know the internet is the place where all the creepy and dangerous people are. Watch your TV, it tells you so! Or don't you believe anymore what you see on TV?
Free expression, free opinion, thinking for yourself? What for, when you can have Fox?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Every time there is new technology, it makes crime easier, and some news guru will always spin an article out of that. Do you know how criminals usually find out that it makes crime easier? They realize the technology makes LIFE easier and just start to apply it to their crimes. Look at cell phones, internet, with emails. These are all used all the time by criminals and new laws have been made because of these technologies, but its not likw the technology is the problem. Just about every step forward for technological progress turns into a step forward for criminals, but the pros just about always will out weight the cons. Just remember that you read the articles with these headlines, so reports will always be there to produce them, stating the hazards of fusion, quantum computers, and Playstation 4.
Back in 1996 when my family got Internet access, dialup access was almost the norm among the middle class families where we lived in coastal North Carolina. We weren't uber-elite, we weren't ahead of the curve by any wide margin. We were like most of our middle class neighbors. My parents at least tried to monitor what I did, and they instilled a healthy fear of revealing my information online because I wasn't an adult and couldn't defend myself against sex offenders.
Fast forward to today. It's quite common for young teens and late preteens to play "taunt the pedophile" with naughty, often slutty, pictures. Parents don't even try to monitor their kids' access by randomly checking on them, reading through their history (rarely worked, but at least our parents tried back then a lot harder than most today). Many, many parents today just don't want to be bothered. It's not their fault that junior is living a completely parent-free life the moment he goes online. Oh no. Parents can't be expected to be the boss in their own homes!
I've said it once, I'll say it again. Too many parents today regard the Internet as Happy Playland(tm) and don't even bother trying to protect their kids today. Then again, maybe this is necessary because too many of my peers in college had a dreadfully naive view of basic security. It's about being a responsible parent. When you had that child, you took on the responsibility of being a parent. That means you sacrifice personal time and career where necessary to raise them. I'm sick of people who insist that they can have it all, while they do half-assed jobs as parents in the name of finding "personal fullfillment" through everything but being a good parent raising a new generation worthy of those who made this country great.
The problem with myspace, and the internet in general, is that it leaves a record of these kids actions (I am talking about 14-21 year olds as "kids").
You see, before the parents didn't know little susie was blowing little billy behind the gym, now they can read about it and their scared. Or they (the parents) didn't know that their kids know about pot, sex, curse words, even politics to some extent, and they know the kids didn't learn it from them (the parents).
So where did little Susie/Billy learn about premarital sex and drugs and drinking and etc... Tv? no, School? no, Home? Hell no! They must have learned it from MySpace and Yahoo Chatrooms and Eminem.
It's not that kids talk about sex nowadays, and it's not that little girls and boys act like little whores and quasi-pimps, it is that these kids put it out there... for all to see, including their parents.
No, it's not just another backlash. It's another backlash with background midi music and 30 animated gifs.
Definitely bad math. Whoever made the comparison is just plain foolish.
How can anyone compare 33 million physically existing people with 57 million registered accounts in a digital database? Furthermore how do you compare an online "community" with a the state of california?
I would moderate you flamebait if I could, instead I'll just (impersonally) flame you.
I believe that the comparison to California's crime rate is invalid because cybercrime may or may not involve actual physical contact. And, if it doesn't involve physical contact (for example, a dirty phone conversation), then it may not be reported.
So what, now -talking- about having underage sex is illigal, should be reported as sexual harrassment or such? wtf? Keep the frame of reference here. The issue was the fact that people were meeting on myspace and proceeding to have real, in person, SEX!. My issues with the legal age aside, you can NOT compare phonesex with a minor to statitory rape.
IMHO, that job should include removing computers from their children's bedroom.
At what age does it become acceptable? 18? 16? 14? If you've got a 15 year old girl that wants to flirt on the net, removing her computer from her room isnt going to stop her. If you want to be sure that she doesnt go meet some 40 year old in a motel for a night of wild sex, then raise her with values that wouldnt let her do that.
Teens running off and having sex with older folks isnt a symptom of the internet, its a symptom of something totally different. Yes, teach them not to put themselves in bad situations, but that doesnt mean removing their privacy to achieve it.
When my dad started dating my mom, he was 22 and she was 16. 30 years ago, that was still a big age difference, but when they past their 30th anniversary this year, it made me wonder what kinda fuss they went through and weather it would be more or less flac if I dated someone 6 years my junior now.
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It's quite common for young teens and late preteens to play "taunt the pedophile" with naughty, often slutty, pictures.
Indeed. I'm often amazed that so many people seem to refuse to accept the existance of exhibitionists.
Sluts and teases often are exhibitionists. They enjoy having people drool at them. Some use "mooning" as a socially aceptable outlet for their desire to show their ass to people, and now there's the joy of webcams, where they can, from the security of their own room, show their nubile bodies to countless strangers.
Off course, there are laws against exhibitionism (especially for those under an arbitrary age), as there are laws against oral sex (in some places), but when has it ever been enough to tell teenagers not to do something they want to do? That usually makes them want to do it more just for the joy of rebelling.
You can't take the sky from me...
And this doesn't happen if people were to meet in a bar? MySpace is not the cause, merely (another) conduit.
The guy is the problem, not MySpace.
I live in Baltimore County. We just had a arrest of a man who went out on a date with a woman from myspace where he killed her on the date.
I think that the story could have ended there as it's no different than any other date... But nooooo. They had to go on and mention that they met on MySpace. I assume that meeting on MySpace is so much different than meeting in say, a bar, where you would probably be even more vunerable either by way of alcohol or open containers that are easy enough to slip in a drug.
Anything to make a story "interesting".
Would it make anyone feel any better if they met at a party? Or a bar? Or on a telephone chat line? Or at work? Or at school? Or on a public street?
At what point exactly can we blame the context more than the criminals?
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
This misses the point: MySpace has numerous "polls" and other crap that asks kids questions which destroy their privacy. Kids being kids don't see the danger in having a permanent public record about themselves and routinely answer questions like whether or not they drink, do drugs and have sex. Coupled with the ease in which they disclose their age, where they live and where they go to school, kids disclose all sorts of information online they shouldn't and make it easy to tie the myspace account to an actual human.
This isn't limited to MySpace, but MySpace asks the questions and prompts kids to reveal this information.
I also don't question whether or not schools have the right to block MySpace at the firewall, they do and should do so if they deem it isn't of educational value. Computers and the 'net are in school to support curriculum, not to meet your buddies online and chat with.
You know you're a geek if you've ever replied to a tagline.
I'd argue that most of the 33 million residents of California are also adbots, fake profiles and inactive users. So, the ratio still holds...
-ds
I may go down in a ball of flames for this but...
/. so you know this ain't real).
I honestly believe statutory rape is not real rape. It's all religious dogma masked by political posturing. Let's say I'm 21 and married to a 16 year old. Yep, that's legal in most of Europe. And we're having sex too (this is
We fly out to the states for our honeymoon and bam I can be locked up for 5 years.
WTF?
Do girls really only become women in the US at 18 but in most of Europe at 16? 14 in the Netherlands?
Or is there an element of prudishness mixed with a lack of political will to look soft on anything with 'rape' in the title.
Real rape is a horrific deprivation of a woman's right to choose and consent to an intimate act. Statutory rape is a politician telling a woman she has no right to consent.
62 cases of statutory rape per month in California says more about a need to change the age of consent than it does the presence of predatory adults.
-Nano.
Sometimes people meet each other through school and then have underage sex... I don't hear any claims that school is a "danger to teens". It's time we stopped blaming technology for merely giving people opportunities to show their moral fibre.
School is a danger to teens! There, you see? I claimed it. But seriously, many professionals in the area of education have said, after many years in the secondary ed industry, that school is in fact a real danger to growing minds' ability to develop critical thinking skills; it is almost as if those of us that possess them do so despite school rather than because of it.
For specific such professionals, I would refer you to John Taylor Gatto, The Underground History of American Education, and perhaps Neil Postman, Teaching as a Subversive Activity. Both are well respected educators who think that schools on the whole are, in the words of Jon Stewart, 'Hurting America'.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
That's exactly what concerns me as well. I've read profiles of kids that my kids know and some of them are smart enough not to post risque pictures of themselves and know some of the basics of online safety (one 14 or 15yo girl posing in a bikini top, holding a condom, and winking aside). Yes, they cuss, gossip, and talk about sex - I know they do that everywhere else as well. The profiles and surveys, though, tend to give away a lot of information.
As I told my daughter, even if you don't post your pictures or reveal info about yourself intentionally, there are lots of ways to piece together info.
I said, "What if your picture isn't online, but you post that you're meeting Brittany, Lindsey, and Paris (not their real names) at the food court on Friday night. Their profiles are linked, they've posted pictures of themselves and you, and you've all answered the questionnaires on your likes and dislikes. Then Friday, some guy comes up and says he's Nicole's (who isn't there) cousin and he's a big fan of so-and-so and really loves the same movies you do and know's all of your names. Can you see that this could potentially be a scary situation? Here's a guy in real life who acts like he knows you and knows more about you than a stranger possibly should and you know nothing about him. What is he asked y'all to leave to mall to go meet Nicole and some of your other friends?"
-- stream of did I lock the front door consciousness
And this comment right here shows the real danger of kids going online, the fall of modern grammar and spelling. Do you really want your kid to sound like this?
And moyameehaa, maybe you're not a native English speaker. If so, I'm sorry that I had to use you as an example for this satire. If not... you should hang your head in shame, man.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.