My Scary Space or My Safe Space?

The controversy over MySpace.com continues to grow and, now, the company is beginning to take steps to squelch the mountain of negative publicity it is getting.

Recently, a 14-year-old Texas girl and her mother sued MySpace (and its parent company, NewsCorp) for up to $40million. Why? Because the girl interacted with a boy she thought was a younger man and agreed to meet him. The boy turned out to be 19 years old, and he sexually assaulted the girl.

My first reaction when reading this story was that both the boy and the girl were in the wrong. The boy should not have lied about his age (and probably other information as well). Lying is wrong, but it fuels many websites that ask for age verification. So many do not care about honesty and websites are going to have to figure out a way to make sure minors do not see things they should not and that adults cannot pose as minors.

However, the girl was also in the wrong. She simply could not have been thinking when she agreed to meet a total stranger from MySpace. While she may have chatted or shared stories, she did not know him and had never seen him! Parents, once again, may I ask you to be very careful about what your children are doing online?

To read the webpronews account of the story and the lawsuit, click here.

With that story (and several others like it) coming out, MySpace has announced that it is going to start enforcing tougher security practices. (Could it be that they are simply trying not to get sued again?)

My fear is that young people will move on to some other site, and so will the predators. This is a scary problem, and it is nowhere near fixed.

To read a story about the new security measures MySpace is planning on implementing, click here.