Jan 6, 2009 7:13 pm US/Eastern
Children Engage In Risky Behavior On MySpace
Reporting
Cindy Hsu
RIDGEWOOD, N.J. (CBS) ―
A new study on teenagers and social networking sites found that more than half of the teens surveyed mentioned drugs, alcohol, sex or violence on their MySpace pages. While this study focused on 18-year-olds, risky online activity starts with kids much younger.
A group of 7th and 8th graders at George Washington Middle School in Ridgewood, New Jersey, internet experts known as Teen Angels, have been studying the online habits of their classmates. They created a fake teenager on Facebook, and over the computer had him contact other students, asking them to be friends.
Two-thirds of them said yes to this imaginary stranger.
"Adding people you don't know is a very dangerous thing, because when you add somebody they can see your pictures, what you write, what people write about you, they can do stuff on your profile, and they can find out stuff about you that you don't want people you don't know to find out," said 13-year-old Taryn Carroll.
The Teen Angels said there's so much focus on being cool that kids post all sorts of inappropriate pictures online.
"There might be pictures of people drinking or pictures of people smoking or doing illegal things like vandalism or stuff like that," said 14-year-old Ryan Sharkey.
Technology teacher Mary Lou Handy said parents also need to know about tagging. That's when your child's picture can be posted online by someone else.
"I tell my students on a regular basis that they should google their name, their screen name, their nicknames, their siblings nicknames and their parents nicknames," Handy said.
Handy also tells parents to use the 24 hour rule. Tell your child that in 24 hours, you'll be checking their MySpace or Facebook page. It'll build rapport and also give them a chance to take anything down if it's inappropriate.
About 100 of Handy's students recently googled themselves and about 30 of them found their pictures or their names on sites they had no connection with.
She says the key is to talk openly to your teens about internet safety.
"It makes the kids feel more comfortable with their parents so they can tell them things that happen in life, important things, bad things, when they get cyber-bullied, because if they don't tell somebody it's just going to get worse," Taryn said. "If they communicate with them, the kids will tell them what goes on and what happens and anything bad that happens or anything that's against the law that happens."
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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