The great monster MySpace
There was an article in yesterday's Wall Street Journal with the title MySpace Moves to Gives Parents More Information. MySpace has developed software that would allow parents to identify the name, age, and location associated with the user profiles accessed from a particular computer. The presumption is that parents could easily identify whether their 14 year-old child is representing herself (or himself) as a 25 year-old. The article states, "The software, code-named "Zephyr", represents MySpace's latest attempt to pacify critics who claim that the site is unsafe for teens." MySpace is attempting to forestall any legal action by a group of 33 state attorneys general, who would like to impose some serious consequences on the site.
However, the data suggests that MySpace is not nearly the threat that the state attorneys general would have you believe. Since MySpace's inception, there have been "dozens of teens" molested, and some murdered, by individuals who met them on MySpace. For the sake of argument, let's round "dozens" up to a hundred. MySpace has 60 million users. Even if you were to assume that half of their users were in the 14-18 age group (which is probably overstating things), that would be 30 million users. So a hundred children out of 30 million is a rate of 0.33 incidents per 100,000 children -- and that is over a three year period. By comparison, according to Department of Transportation statistics, in 2004, there were 5896 children in the 16-20 age range killed in traffic accidents, or a rate of 28.63 per 100,000 -- and that's a single year period. So children on MySpace are 258 times more likely to die in a traffic accident than to be abused by a stranger they met on MySpace.
The reality is, most politicians are older individuals who don't understand modern social networks like MySpace. People fear what they don't understand, and MySpace makes a great target for politicians to grandstand and show that they are "protecting the children".
The new MySpace software might be a useful tool, but it is no substitute for parents being involved in their kids' lives. And that, unfortunately, is the major problem. For the kids who were abused by people they met on MySpace, how many of them had parents that were actively involved in their lives, who knew what their kids were doing, who taught them the risks, and who were willing to set boundaries?
However, the data suggests that MySpace is not nearly the threat that the state attorneys general would have you believe. Since MySpace's inception, there have been "dozens of teens" molested, and some murdered, by individuals who met them on MySpace. For the sake of argument, let's round "dozens" up to a hundred. MySpace has 60 million users. Even if you were to assume that half of their users were in the 14-18 age group (which is probably overstating things), that would be 30 million users. So a hundred children out of 30 million is a rate of 0.33 incidents per 100,000 children -- and that is over a three year period. By comparison, according to Department of Transportation statistics, in 2004, there were 5896 children in the 16-20 age range killed in traffic accidents, or a rate of 28.63 per 100,000 -- and that's a single year period. So children on MySpace are 258 times more likely to die in a traffic accident than to be abused by a stranger they met on MySpace.
The reality is, most politicians are older individuals who don't understand modern social networks like MySpace. People fear what they don't understand, and MySpace makes a great target for politicians to grandstand and show that they are "protecting the children".
The new MySpace software might be a useful tool, but it is no substitute for parents being involved in their kids' lives. And that, unfortunately, is the major problem. For the kids who were abused by people they met on MySpace, how many of them had parents that were actively involved in their lives, who knew what their kids were doing, who taught them the risks, and who were willing to set boundaries?
posted by David at 1/18/2007 08:28:00 PM
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