Have you heard of MySpace.com? If you haven’t, you will want to
educate yourself. MySpace.com has become a popular website among teens,
preteens, and adults as a place to post messages and chat with others.
It works in this way … Users sign-on and create personal web pages.
Participants must be 14 years of age to have a page, so younger children
must lie to gain access to the site. Often kids will use the term "POS",
meaning "Parent Over Shoulder" to warn whomever they may be chatting
with to tone down their conversations. They can add pictures or messages
that others can access. They can also access pictures or messages any
other MySpace users may have posted. If you choose to quickly scan
MySpace, you will see that many of these pictures and messages are adult
in nature. Recently MySpace.com was linked to a pedophile bust in
Riverside and a bomb threat at a high school in Costa Mesa. A search for
news articles about MySpace on your web browser will result in multiple
stories about children who are missing nationwide because of contacts
they have made with nefarious MySpace users.
It has come to my attention that there are Del Cerro students who
have created personal pages at MySpace.com. These students have created
pages at home for the innocent purpose of communicating with friends;
however, they have had to lie about their age to participate. (SVUSD
firewalls have identified MySpace.com as an adult website and therefore
block all students and staff from accessing the site from school.)
While the decision to allow a child to have a MySpace.com page is a
parenting decision, I urge all parents to be vigilant about their
children’s use of MySpace.com and all other web surfing.
Your best defense against the perils of the Internet is simple trust.
Start by establishing the following ground rules (taken from "Family
Fun" magazine) with your kids and encourage everybody to stick to
them. (You might even tape them on the wall next to your computer).
1. I WON'T GIVE OUT PERSONAL INFO
I will never reveal my real name, where I live, my phone number,
computer passwords or any other personal information to anyone on the
Internet under any circumstances, no matter how nicely they ask or who
they say they are. If someone does ask, or if anything else suspicious
happens to me on the Internet, I will immediately stop what I'm doing
and get an adult.
2. I WILL SHOW E-MAILS TO MY PARENTS
I promise to never open e-mail from anybody I don't know. Instead, I'll
save it and show it to my parents.
3. I WILL BE CAREFUL IN CHAT ROOMS
I will never visit an un-moderated chat room without a parent's
permission. In any chat room, I will remember that there is no way to
tell if somebody chatting with me is really a friend or just pretending
to be a friend. And just to be safe, I'll use a gender-neutral screen
name.
4. MY PARENTS AND I ARE A TEAM
Since my parents trust me enough to abide by these rules, I promise that
when they ask me for help performing even the simplest of computer
tasks, I will not laugh at them or act overly condescending ;-)
The above rules are only the basics, and you may wish to modify or
add to them as necessary. (If your family has a digital camera, for
example, you might add a clause forbidding the transmission of family
photos without permission.)
If there are any questions, or if there are things that you feel I
need to be aware of, please contact me. Happy surfing and stay safe!
Lisa Graham, Principal
RELEVANT SITES
Internet safety strategies and technologies are constantly changing. For
information and resources on the latest developments, visit the
following Web sites:
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