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MySpace to Offer Spyware for Parents
mrspin writes "Following continuing pressure from politicians (and parts of the media), MySpace is planning to offer parents the chance to download software which will monitor aspects of their children's activities on the social networking site. From a business point of view, the move appears to be a highly risky one. The young users of social networking sites are notorious for their lack of loyalty — and history suggests that a change like this could tempt many to abandon MySpace for the 'next cool thing'."
People under the age of 13 are not allowed to sign up for an account on myspace. His daughter must have lied about her age in order to get an account in the first place.
She's 12 years old. I thought it was the parents responsibility to monitor what there kids are doing online. Isn't that right? Sure, we can just view her myspace page and take it for granted that we're seeing everything. I was just glad to see that she had actually listened to us and not given-up any identifying information.
As I already said, I don't know the ins-and-outs of myspace; but I sure as hell know what's going on if we have her password.
Label me whatever you want, but she has no right to use my computer, network, or home(for that matter) in ways that her mother and I don't see fit.
Even better that it didn't take my threatening to install a key-logger for her to cough-up the password(because I certainly would have, it's my system, she's a child).
put the what in the where?
It isn't being "naive" to trust your children. If you can't trust them, then you can't trust your own parenting.
At some point, you're going to let your kids out into the world. You can't spy on them 24-hours a day, and you can't spy on them once they've moved out/gone on to college/gone on with the rest of their lives. You need to build up trust both ways, so that you'll generally know that they are staying out of trouble, and so that they'll let you know if they ever need help or have done something stupid.
The problem is that most people don't seem to understand the difference between "parenting" and "threatening." A friend of mine, 16, in high school years ago, went to a party once. He drank way, way too much, showed up at home, and passed out in the hallway. His parents checked on him and turned him over on his side when they found him later, but left him there. The next morning, they sat him down (with his blistering headache) and told him that they didn't mind his drinking until he couldn't stand, but that he should probably take a hint from the fact that he woke up in the hallway in a pile of his own vomit, feeling like his head was going to split open and spawn a greek goddess. The gist of the talk was that he needed to learn from his own lessons, and that they might not be there next time to keep him from swallowing his tongue.
They understood that punishing him for it was probably just going to make him rebel and do it again. They also understood that they couldn't watch him 24/7. He understood, from his pounding headache and the embarrasing situation in which he was placed, that he should probably not drink, or at the very least slow down - a lot. From that point forward, he was a lot more conservative in what he did for fun, and was more often than not a designated driver.
They also took this time to tell him that if he did something this stupid (underage drinking, drinking-and-driving, or whatever else) and was arrested for it, they'd bail him out once, and only once. He DID do something a few years later, and spent a night in jail for it. When we asked him why he didn't call them to come get him, he said that he knew he shouldn't have done it, was willing to take the punishment, and didn't want to waste his "get-out-of-jail-free card" on something that he knew he shouldn't have done in the first place.
You can argue the legality of a 16-year-old drinking enough hunch punch to cause alcohol poisoning all day long, but there's wisdom here. You can educate your kids and punish them all you like, but they'll still do dumb things. Sometimes they just have to learn from experience. The trick is what and where that experience is.
Instead of spying on them, ask questions. Instead of threatening to punish them for future acts, simply punish them when it is appropriate, and explain why. Instead of telling them never to use or filing lawsuits against , email them news clippings about these incidents, or get them to pay attention to the news and point out that picking up strangers on social networking sites is no different from picking up hitchhikers on the side of the highway.
Most importantly, don't be there to bail them out every single time they get into trouble. Teach them that they have to take responsibility for their own actions, and that you can't be there every time they make a poor decision. If you're there for them every single time they do something bad, they're just going to grow up thinking that you're always going to be there to "rescue" them, and that they are free to do whatever they want with no lasting consequences.
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