Parents, watch sites like Myspace closely

How should parents handle Internet websites such as Myspace.com?

Parents of younger kids should handle most Internet activity with the same care they would use in letting their kids play in the street. It’s probably OK if a parent is closely watching; otherwise you’re just asking for trouble. Parents of teens and older kids should also be vigilant and observant, but at this age the kids themselves are mostly responsible for their own actions on the web, just as they are in most of their other interactions.

We teach kids from a very early age a set of common-sense behaviors that they use to guide interactions, which most kids get and apply. Things like “look both ways before crossing” and “don’t talk to strangers” are easily understood and well accepted by kids. Use of the Internet also requires some common sense safety behaviors that are equally easy to teach and learn from an early age. “Don’t ever publicly post your real full name, address or phone number” is a simple guideline for website and blog usage and it applies to everyone, at any age.

Some kids will still choose to ignore common sense rules and those are the ones we’ll read about. The Internet is a phenomenal tool with immense power and reach. It’s also, by nature, mostly unregulated and uncontrolled and hopefully it will stay that way.

MySpace is a massive Internet success story, rocketing to one of the top five most-visited sites in just a couple of years, which is part of its particular problem. It grew 443% in the last year alone and logged 35 million unique visitors in January of 2006. MySpace has simply grown wildly beyond its founders’ capabilities to effectively and safely manage it. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. bought MySpace last summer for $580 million, so you can be sure that the current problems will get lots of attention, but users will still be required to apply common sense and caution.

MySpace is simply the problem du jour. Since its audience is dominated by fickle and easily bored teens, it has a very high fad risk and will likely be replaced by something else soon enough. All the same, common-sense rules for kids and parents will always apply.