Quite Right with the Iraq analogy, quite right....

Both my daughters post alot on myspace, so I created a name and joined, BUT only to be able to read my daughters thoughts. I have 2 friends, both my daughters and I am on their friends list. The oldest has a few friends on her list, but the youngest has 200 something on her, what the hell is that about? I do not know 200 people let alone have 200 friends.

I'll be your friend, too, MM. You can see my fake photos (they're actually all pictures of my favorite author, Unamuno) and my false screen name (I still won't go by the real thing, you couldn't pay me enough)!
Just look for San Chonino

As with most sites and other things, its what you make it.

Granted MySpace has many (many many) faults, but its also a huge site and extremly "open" for just about anything. Given that some things should be expected to go wrong. Maybe more precautions could have been put into place to help stop alot of it long before now.

Personally, I have a myspace page that I only have 4 friends on. One of which was someone I just recently recontacted through there after 8 yrs of lost contact (it happens when you move alot). So it does have some good points as well.

As said... it is what it is and its also what you make it.

To quote the heading of a recent forum post on this site... "MySpace is a disease".  Simple as that.  There's not nearly enough good about it to justify all the horrible.  It should be gone already.

My wife teaches junior high, and we recently checked out the pages of some of her students, and were SHOCKED at the information they put up for anyone and everyone to read.  One of her ex students, now a 17 year old college freshman, had her college dorm and room number displayed on the site.  And a picture of herself.  She might as well just invite the pervs over for dinner.  And this was at Miami of Ohio, which has had 2 recent rapes occur on campus.  When my wife expressed to her her concern, her reply was, "I didn't even think about that...I just wanted my friends to know where I lived."

And this from a VERY smart 17 year old college freshman.  Just imagine how stupid most 14 year olds are...

And this from a VERY smart 17 year old college freshman.

Didn't know such a creature existed....

She doesn't sound very smart to me

that's my point... even the smartest of teenagers are naive and do stupid things...

Any place youngsters gather is going to attract a certain number of pedophiles, from the local park or public pool to skating rinks and theaters. MySpace is no different in that respect.

Not quite....in those places the rock spiders are discernible from the actual children....they're the ones with their hands down the front of their pants.

On Myspace the 'anonymity' of the net puts the advantage firmly with the spiders.

There are simply 'some places' you can choose NOT to frequent....and you WON'T have a diminished social life from the [lack of the] experience....

Shooting dens....

Brothels....

Myspace.com....

None is really necessary....

You can be my friend too modman My parents both have myspace accounts and while my brother and I are both adults they are both on our friend's lists. I do not have anyone that I do not know on my friend's list. But I also do not check it religiously like I do JU Myspace isn't as much the problem as the over-hormoned teenagers that abuse it. But I feel like we've had this discussion before
Charissa

My problem with things like MySpace, LiveJournal, or heck even JoeUser/WinCustomize is how people become dependent on them for their social interactions. It becomes as real to them as a real-life friendship/relationship would be, and they take great offense/joy from what ammounts mostly to text on a screen from people who are largely strangers. This happens especially easily with younger people who have a more broad definition of what constitutes a friendship or relationship, having grown up with the Internet.

However, this dependency/forming of semi-false ties is not the fault of the site or the technology that hosts it, it is a fault of the people who become dependent. It's a neutral platform that allows others to use/abuse it as they like.

Are parents right to blame a public park if they send their young children off alone to it and something bad happens there? If parents aren't willing to let their kid wander off alone to some unknown destination, why are they so willing to send their kids off without supervision onto the Internet? A lot of these problems with Myspace etc... could be prevented/helped if parents were as proactive about what their kids do online as they are about what they do offline (of course there are the parents who do neither).

I'm getting sick and tired of everyone blaming the Internet, video games etc... for bad things happening to kids. It's a neutral platform. What happened to parental responsibility?

Myspace isn't as much the problem as the over-hormoned teenagers that abuse it

Well, when MySpace ignores the abuse, then they become the problem.  A little moderation wouldn't hurt that site...

MySpace is not somewhere I choose to spend my time, because I find it is more of a personal advertisement than a dialogue. I have LiveJournal, which is a better fit to my needs in terms of keeping up with the activities of those I know about.

As for the person who didn't have 200 friends - well, with the Internet, it is certainly possible to at least have 200 people you know to a degree. Maybe they're not all close friends, but you can still know them to a reasonable extent. Offline, it may simply not be possible to find as many interesting people. That is part of the reason why I choose to spend most of my time online.

I'm getting sick and tired of everyone blaming the Internet, video games etc... for bad things happening to kids. It's a neutral platform. What happened to parental responsibility?

I think every good caring adult should feel some social responsibility to protect our children instead of just saying "It's the parents job".  It is in fact the parents job, but we all know that a large number of parents just don't care.  So I feel like it is our job, as responsible adults in our respective communities to pick up the slack and keep our kids safe.  To often people don't care about others, and just say it's someone elses job. 

Yeah, I put a "to" in there that should've been a "too".  Back off, Jafo. 

Yes, sometimes others have to pick up some of the responsibility the parents choose to abdicate... but it still doesn't shift to the sites. So long as they comply with local and national laws, that's all that can reasonably be asked of them. It's not the fault of MySpace admins that bad people use the site.

Well, I don't think it's the fault of MySpace admin... but regardless, it it's becoming a danger to children, it needs to be fixed.  If that means shutting it down, well then, so be it.  Sucks to be MySpace.  I wouldn't feel sorry for them a bit if it made children just a little safer.