I think a big part of the problem was that parents were taken by surprise. Parents who thought they had done everything they could possibly do to ensure their kids' safety were suddenly confronted with an unforeseen threat that appeared to come from out of nowhere. A threat they'd not taught their children anything about, because the threat did not exist in the past. So, parents were frantic.

Teens, meanwhile, were filling in profile entries, commenting, and blogging away, most of them apparently of the opinion that they were simply carrying on a semi-private conversation with their friends.

At that time, with parents unaware, with teens romping in their new playground unattended, with MySpace too bogged down trying to keep up with surging bandwidth demands to worry about safety features, MySpace was indeed an ideal venue for predators.

The mass media caught on, and MySpace became a daily news item. Media and police and citizens set up traps for the predators, parents found their teens' MySpace sites, and some people who have knowledge of both technology and parenting began the process of educating parents and teens.

MySpace is undoubtedly less dangerous now than it was 9 months ago. The new MySpace management has improved many aspects of the site. The predators know there are traps set for them. Many teens who were previously oblivious are now more aware and more careful.

The degree of danger of sites like MySpace is becoming more akin to the degree of danger that exists in the non-virtual world. But there's still a difference: in the real world, you see the person you're communicating with; on MySpace, you see the web scripted image the person wants to portray to you.

As Anne Collier said on the old BlogSafety site, one type of danger may be waning, but other types of danger may be on the increase -- for example, gang activity, bullies, malicious hacker activity all seem to be on the increase on MySpace...

Like many of the people in this forum, I am a parent and I spend a lot of time in the online world, interacting with people as young as 11, and lots of late teen/early twenty people due to my rather incredibly popular Q&A weblog Ask Dave Taylor Tech Support.

I also have a MySpace account and have about 75 friends or so, the vast majority of whom I have never interacted with prior to joining the MySpace community. Visit my MySpace page

Here's my thought, though: are we worrying about the 0.001% and not noticing that for the other 99.999% that the site is working very well, people are finding it a pleasant and safe social network, and are having fun?

Obviously, if it's your child who gets into trouble, that 0.001% is going to see incredibly high, but everything we do has risks, from eating meat and chicken to eating chocolate bars. In other walks of life we assess the potential risk and make a "go/no go" decision based on our personal comfort level.

What is it about the online world, however, that makes this different? I am supportive of the mission of BlogSafety, but I would encourage all of us to ask some candid questions about where the risk really does lay, and how we can minimize that risk to our children without blowing the danger far, far out of proportion.

Thoughts?

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Edited by d1taylor at 06/26/2006 11:00 PM