MySpace

My son has a MySpace page, but my daughter does not. He is almost 15 and we have discussed many issues about internet safety. I check his page often, and everything seems fine. However, I would not hesitate to shut it down if I saw anything that I felt was not safe or appropriate. He only allows his MySpace friends to view his page, and he only has real-life friends as MySpace friends--I think that is a key factor to staying safe. He keeps up with his school friends through MySpace and Instant Messaging. Hey, saves me from paying a large cell phone/texting bill. Still, I know that there ARE dangers out there just looking to find their way into innocent places. He is only allowed to use the computer when a parent can observe. He currently does NOT have a computer in his room behind closed doors. Some of his friends do and he complains that we are "paranoid" about it. My daughter has the same rules about having a parent nearby to observe. We want to be able to monitor what they are doing online, and we don't want to have bad things show up after the fact, so we want to watch them, not just check up on them later. And yes, we have many parent blocks and other monitoring tools on our computers, but they aren't completely fail-safe. So that is how we feel about it: MySpace in itself is not bad...it can be a helpful communication tool. But we do want to cautiously monitor our teens when they are on the internet to protect them from the bad things that are out there. A few things have slipped in on occasion, sometimes when us, the parents, are online. We know how sneaky some evil-doers can be: tricking innocent people to click on something that seems oh, so innocent, then being steered to a site that is highly offensive or dangerous. It's as if there are people standing outside of our houses trying to find a way to sneak in...and sometimes they get by even the most observant and vigilant users. I feel violated when this happens, and I HATE it when someone sneaks into MY family's computer and soils it up with nasty things that we did NOT want on OUR computers!! So we will continue to let them get online, but we will also continue to monitor their use VERY closely. I feel that we are doing our job as parents regarding this, but sometimes I wish we had even more tools that cannot be penetrated and were completely reliable. I guess there will always be bad people trying to find ways to get around barriers just as soon as the barriers are put into place. For now, we will keep a sharp eye on our teens when they go online and we will use the tools that we have to keep as much of the bad stuff away as we possibly can. Hopefully they will be "safe surfers" when surfing the 'net! :)