dude seriously ya'll need to stop this bad info reporting that ya'll have been doing about myspace. it's the safest site that i know about talking to friends and finding new & old friends. im wouldnt be suprised if tom (the creator of myspace) knows what ya'll are doing to his site.

joe

It's not just cyber space where kids get harrased
With the popularity of cell phones, kids can harrass all they want, there is nothing the police can do, they can't trace the calls, except to the user tower,, and that no help, My Daughter went through hell , because some kid had anonimity
and knew there was nothing she could do, or me for that matter...

The possible dangers with My Space are very real. Predators wishing to stock, kidnap, rob a home, or to commit worse crimes are all easier to commit by sitting at home and letting My Space help the predator with the research on whom is vulnerable.

However, similar rules that mom and dad taught us when we were four years old still apply. Do not talk to people you do not know on My Space. Do not tell anyone you do not already know critical information about you; last name, cell phone, address or even neighborhood, pictures of you or your friends that you would not want EVERYONE to see.

Cyber bullying can seem worse than being called names at school because it is out on the web for the world to see. But how likely is it for the world to see it? I can guarantee that sending the URL to view a web page travels only as fast and as far as verbal bullying spreads through a school and their outside friends. “Did you hear about...?” Weather the bullying is in person or online does not matter in the long run. What does matter is the ability to ignore and or deal with it, depending on the situation.

I think that there some discrimination against my space, we all know why these dumb sex offenders have tried numberous times to get to these innocent people on my space, they're mean, cruel despicable people

but it is No reason to have an inoccent web site, like my space, be the victim of cyber bullying, there are people that work on that site, that serve our community , and i would be surprised if the entire population of sex offenders that bullied those innocent people on my space were charged with cyber bullying felony charges

my point is: my space should build
a set of anti-cyber bullying rules that
any new members would follow , so that there would be peace on that site, without there being anymore offenders trying to sneak in to my space
because, i'm in favor of this idea

My opinion about "My Space" is that it is very dangerous site for the kids to get into various troubles. There are kids of very young age (even six years old)subscribed to it saying they are eighteen.Their parents do not have a clue they are on it. Yer recently there are more informations about it in media what should help parents to be aware of it. Still, there are many other problems besides bullying that can come out of it. I am definetely against it. My opinion is whoever started it should end it ASAP.

Blaming myspace for the problems of child
predators and cyber bullying is like blaming
the internet for pornography.

Neither is the root cause, it's just the
delivery vehicle.

We don't hold UPS or Fed-Ex or the USPS to
the same standard.

But we do establish clear, common sense
guidelines and oversight for proper use.

There is no fail proof system and no system
that predators OR children will not find a
way around.

As long as myspace acts in good faith to
provide a reasonably safe environment, the
rest is up to us.

Right now, I think the standard of reasonability
is to inform users of the potential risks and
LEAVE IT UP TO THE USER to act in their own
best interests, as is currently the case with
almost every other public space - public parks,
playgrounds, etc.

That does not mean leaving it up to children.

Children can't afford internet access. Parents
can. Adults can.

Not every adult is responsible for every child.
Nor should they be expected to be.

Parents on the other hand can and should be
responsible for their children.

I said, responsible, not accountable. There
are limits to what parents can and should be
expected to anticipate and provide for.

Beyond that, it is not unreasonable to expect
the systems our children have access to to
either work with parents or at least not get
in the way of the process of good parenting.

If myspace insists on being an accessible
medium for children they bear some, but not
absolute or sole responsibility.

YO0UH KNOE WHAT YALL NE3H TA CHiiLL MYSPAC3 iiZ DA B0MB N YALL KNOE IT S0 ST0P TRiiPiiN DAYUM!!! YO0UH KNOE YO0UH LOV3 MYSPACE SO JUSS G3T OV3R IT. WWW.MYSPACE.COM/XOXHAILEYXOX HELLZ Y3S YO0UH NKOE YO0UH LOV3 IT, N0W DATTTTTT iiZ Mii DAMN OPiiNiiON!!

This isnt a myspace responsibility, its a parental one. I know parents love to let their kids do anything because they are too damn lazy to police their own children they want some law to do it for them.

Watch the 11:00 pm news tonight. It shows reporters tracking down teenagers from the info that they put on their my space page. Kids over 17 I consider responsible but still alittel naive. Under 17 should be monitored on this site. I have my own and I am 32. Most of my friends teens are doing wrong things and they are thankful that I am there to help them know what their children are up too.

There were recently hearings in Congress on
Child Predators and the Internet:

Energy & Commerce, Oversight and Investigations Cmte. Hearing on the Sexual Exploitation

(It's available on the C-Span website)

A young man who testified before the panel
(who also appeared on Oprah) informed them
that when his mother took his computer
keyboard away, he simply informed the men
he chatted with on the Internet and they
bought and sent him another keyboard in
the mail.

Point being, no matter how much or how often
or by what means people are informed of the
hazards of the Internet and what NOT to do,
no matter what legislation, obstacles or
barriers are put in their way, the truly
determined, and the willfully ignorant
will find a way to not act in their own
best interests.

There is only so much that anyone can do to
act in anyone else's best interests. At some
point, it's got to be up to the individual. Or,
in the case of children under the legal age,
up to their parents or legal guardians to act
in their best interests.

No parent or legal guardian can do EVERYTHING
possible. And it's not possible to create
a hazard free world.

Given that, have REASONABLE and legally required precautions been taken.

If we insist that the internet be scrubbed clean
of ALL possible hazards - might as well shut it
down now. Widest possible access and hazard
free are mutually incompatible as far as the
Internet is concerned. Pick one or the other.
Can't have both.

I use Myspace......whats so bad about that??? its a way for me to talk to my friends, learn computer lessons and even brush up on my HTML. Parents worry because they have no control over it, dont understand it and or are scared about the new up coming age of the internet. People cannot get raped online, you have to meet in person. thats the kids choice if that happens. What will they blame next????

wow whats with all this talk about myspace. myspace is just ONE of the many sites where online predators are. you shouldn't just be talking about myspace and how bad it is. instead of using the 5 or so minutes you spend talking about how bad of a site myspace is for kids because of predators, you should spend it showing them how to be safe from a predator and certain boundries about what you should say online. Cause all I can say is focusing on the bad of myspace isnt helping.

I use myspace and I was taught how to be safe from a predator and guess what...since I know how to be safe I AM safe and I've had my myspace for 1 1/2 years and nothing even relevant to all the bad stuff you claim to be all over myspace has happened to me...because I KNOW what boundries should be held online.

I just wanted to say that there has been a TON of bad press about MySpace lately, and I want to show the other side of the coin. I personally have a MySpace, as does my daughter. She's 16, and I'm 39. My daughter and I both agree that the ones on MySpace creating problems (such as the predatory issues we've seen in the news) pretty much bring it on themselves. Even my 16-year-old daughter states, "They're asking for it. They put risque pictures on their profile, and even seek out this type of thing themselves." I feel very strongly that the parents need to take the strongest role in protecting their kids, teaching them about online predators and online safety, and enforcing discretion with personal information on their sites. If their kids are not mature enough to handle the responsibility and privilege of being online, then they should block them from use, period, until they are. I also feel that these teenagers who abuse MySpace (and also the predators!) are ruining what is a really GREAT networking tool for people of all ages. I have seen some great things happen on MySpace. I've made some great friends...honest people who are out there honestly, to make friends of their own age, talk about REAL things, and not just use it as a place for cybersex...and we have groups on MySpace that are actually creating some great social contributions - for instance I belong to several yarn/crocheting groups - this is a huge bunch of really nice people exchanging ideas, information, helping with crocheting or knitting problems, sharing completed projects, creating friendships borne from a common interest. Many of us on MySpace have even gathered together knitted/crocheted items to donate to the less fortunate (hats for Afghanistan children and also homeless people, scarves for homeless teens, and friendship afghans). Those of us not abusing MySpace are pretty upset about those children who are not mature enough to be there in the first place! Parents need to exert CONTROL. Be interested in and active in their kids' lives. Maybe parents should create a MySpace of their own and monitor their kids instead of staying in the dark! That's what I did!

Why don't you explain further this young man's homosexual tendencies? the fact that he was 12 or 13 when he started showing himself off on webcam, the fact that he was influenced by homosexual propaganda and the amount of child porn comics from Japan he had stashed in his hard drive? The so called "gay lifestyle" and all these homosexuals exporting their "gay youth" rights garbage has led our nation to this. Perhaps parents should face the ugly facts about what their kids are learning under their noses as "normal" behavior and the fact that States like Washington and Massachusetts have condoned homosexual teachings in public schools.

By the way, did you know that since Massachusetts allowed homosexual teachings in their public schools the rates of reported sex molestations by teenagers on younger children have shot up 50 percent in the last 3 years?

Gay rights, the right to support child molesters.

I agree with Mike. MySpace (and similar sites as such) is merely a tool for online interaction. The problem lies within the people using MySpace. MySpace offers safety protocols, it's the people who choose not to use them. Blaming MySpace on this issue is like blaming every murder on the guy who invented guns. Stop focusing on the site and start focusing on the people who use it (and more importantly, the people who misuse it).

I really find no problem with myspace.com. Yes
there are very bad people out there that want to do very bad things to people. But it takes some a bit of maturely. If a 13 year old is going to log on myspace and meet with people off of the site then I'm sorry but they shouldn’t have computer privileges. Myspace is a site where you have to be mature about it if you going to
post photos with breast hang out then it should be taken care of. I have reported my own friend because the pictures were not approitet.It just matters how stupid the person is on the other
side of the computer screen. People think myspace.com is all bad. But the same thing happens with cell phones and really just meeting people on the streets. The news need to find something other then Myspace.com and the war of terrorism to report about. You can always tell if there nothing going around the world when myspace hits the TV screen. Let me ask you a question. How many of the reports on King 5 or any other news station has a myspace? I'm sure
its a hand full. www.myspace.com/lilkat

I am getting very frustrated with the reactions to MySpace. I use MySpace every day. The problems do not lie within the world of MySpace. We all know that sexual predators are out there...and yes, cyber space has made it a little easier for these predators to prey on their next victim. However, parents need to take more responsibility for their children. So many parents are allowing their children do things that I would have never imagined as a kid (and I'm only 25 now). There is no way in the world my mom would have allowed me to have a webpage on MySpace (not because the site is bad, but because I would have been too young to use it safely). My mom made sure her kids were safe by monitoring what we did, where we were and who we talked to at all times. It seems that parents these days feel that is impossible to do. IT REALLY ISN'T!! You have to set boundaries and stick by them. With the things that parents are allowing their kids to do, watch, say and who they hang out with...it's no wonder we have a generation of youngsters accessing the internet, posting inappropriate pictures of themselves, engaging in adult conversations (with actual adults, adults that they believe are kids or with kids), and so on. It is also no wonder then that we have so many predators using sites such as MySpace (but not limited to MySpace) to prey on their victims. Parents have a few options: 1)quit allowing their children to access the internet altogether--put a password on it, use dial up with a password, or don't have it at all 2) Monitor their child while on the internet (my dad used to sit next to the computer and watch while my sister was online), put passwords on the child's accounts and only allow them to access it with supervision, etc. or 3) Suffer the consequences of bad parenting. I do not like to see parents suffer and I do not believe that the predators should not be punished, but I do believe that parents play the biggest part in keeping their kids safe...I would give this generation of parents a failing grade :-(

after seeing the program tonight, i really don't feel that myspace is, as portrayed, a revolutionary new tool that makes it "tricky" for parents to figure out how to keep in tune with their kids lives. myspace, or the internet for that matter, poses no threat that wouldn't be there otherwise. when i was a teenager in the 80s, i was getting involved in just as serious of problems as anyone who use the internet to fuel lives today.
sure it may be true that it helps aid things like child predators, but those people didn't just start to exist because of the internet. and i don't feel that the internet does anything to make them stronger. if anything, the seattle police officer showed, perhaps unintentionally, that sites like myspace become another tool to help people like her track child predators.
i don't know if i neccesarily would say that myspace is a good influence, but it is not a bad one. while it can be addictive and perhaps keep kids from studying, it can also be a big social boost for a lot of kids that struggle with popularity at school. for every one bad thing that happens on myspace, more good things happen and it is, overall, a very positive tool for young kids today.
in the end, how kids conduct themselves online is, at the least, no different than how they might feel about life on an inner level otherwise. and though parents can't be expected to follow everything their child does online, they shouldn't feel the need to. the seeds should already be sown long before the child learns how to use the internet.
so for the parents on the show who were amazed by the new technology, especially the man who was about to tell his daughter "the jigs up", i say shame on you for only now coming to know what myspace is. 75,000,000+ users and it takes until for an investigative tv show for you to find out? instead of watching investigative tv, perhaps you should've been surfing the net.
parents may not have enough time to keep in touch with the younger generation, but in order to understand where your child is coming from and how to relate to them and make them trust you when you speak to them, it helps to try to stay in touch. some of my friends are now getting old enough that they have teenagers with myspace sites - and so do some parents. can you grasp how close a family can be when parents try so hard to be truly involved with their kids' lives? in such a light, myspace can be a rather beautiful instrument.

It's a bad place for kids and teens to be on. Just think about all the stuff your kids are posting on myspace.com. Why I've heard stories were kids and teens are coming across porn and such other bad stuff that shouldn't even be on myspace.com at all. Listen up parents take action now and find out what your kids are posting on myspace.com. Or even better yet move there computer to were you can see what they are doing on myspace.com. it shouldn't be called myspace.com it should be called mypornspace.com. This country should band myspace.com once and for all.