MySpace PSAs on YouTube
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children is running a series of Public Service Advertisements on the dangers and permanency of posting online at sites such as MySpace, Facebook and other sites. The series of ads are aimed at educating parents and children on the wide reach that the internet has and that you never know who is really looking at what you post.
Here is one of the ads I particularly like – because it shows the effect of the web in a traditional fashion that many more parents are apt to relate to.
Thanks to Trench at MyCrimeSpace for letting me know about these. Please take a few minutes and share some of these with your tweens and teens and discuss!
This is such a scary thing for me to see as I have both a daughter and work with teenagers at church. I hope it will reach our kids and teach them to think twice.
We work with teens too and they spend hours a day on myspace. I’ve tried talking to them and I will post this on my myspace page.
The fact is as long as they set their profiles to ‘private’ or ‘friends only’, they really don’t have too much to worry about. They approve the people they want to see their page and they control who views their MySpace. These PSA’s might appeal to parents, but the kids will laugh at them. They know what’s up.
Our former next door neighbors (twins) have Myspace pages. They are in 4th grade. You should have seen some of the language posted on their profiles, and the comments others were leaving. Of course, they had to lie about their age to sign up. They also have non-english speaking parents, so no one was their to tell them how inappropriate some of the things posted were, at least until we stepped in. They had some of the surveys they were sent and filled out posted, full of sexual terms. We talked with them, and they had no idea what they meant, and after hearing how bad the terms were, they took them down.
Of course, they keep asking to by my Myspace “friend”, which I decline every time. Not that I use Myspace much, but still, they last thing I need is a 4th grader in my friends list.
Josh: A lot of the myspace profiles aren’t set to private. Myspace does automatically set some to private if the person is a certain age, but there are so many kids that lie about their age and their profiles are in public view. They have specific comments on there from their friends about where they went, their school activities, etc. It would not be hard for a predator to make contact with them.
Josh – part of the challenge is educating the parents as well as the teens.
Steve – that is a scary story. The kids (and parents) are lucky to have nice neighbors like you who are willing to guide them in the right direction.
Karen – your insight is always helpful as you work with this age group a lot. Thanks for your view point.
Char – You wouldn’t believe the stuff I hear. Today a teenager told me that she went to the movies yesterday with some friends and they left the movie earlier. They went outside and one of the guys peed on someone’s car and then went running down the alley with his pants pulled down. Hearing this kind of stuff really makes me dread the teenage years.