Is Your Daughter Naked on MySpace?

Whoa!

Hmm .. I don't let my daughter go on myspace. I see what MY friends post .. and what other people post too.... so she is not getting a myspace page unless I have total access to it!

That's pretty scary. Especially thinking what they may attract on the internet to their sites.

Thanks for posting to Kids and Grandkids.

I knew I never wanted girls. jk
I don't know what I'd do to go see my child on myspace doing something ignorant.
I would have to monitor it.

So glad I have Boys!!

AND that I have a LONG long time before I have to worry about them being sexually active!

Excellent article. Thank you for heightening awareness.

You failed to mention that MySpace does have parental controls that can be utilized and the profiles can be set to private and that there is a setting that requires people to know your last name or email address in order to become your friend and see anything about you.

Actually, MySpace is one of the better social networking sites when it comes to protecting your privacy.

Right, Larry J., BUT privacy settings aren't completely hack proof.

If you will note the case of the mom who put her (nude) photos of her young kids on Flickr... Who's Looking At Your Kids Online?

She also thought that was safe and her account was broken into and her pictures viewed by THOUSANDS of strangers.

And just because your profile is private for your "friends" to see DOESN'T mean they can't take your photo and share it with people you're NOT friends with--isn't that the whole point of Myspace? Friends of friends?

So, with that said... if you don't want someone else to get a pic, don't put it online because it CAN be end up somewhere you didn't intend for it to.

You're very welcome, Monica! Thank you :)

I've checked out her myspace. I do it on a regular bases. That is just plain scarey!

When I gave birth and heard my boyfriend say it is a girl, my first thought was - "I don't know how to handle a girl!" I have three brothers and was never very girly so was scared to have a girl. I guess in a way that is good because even though she is only two I am already thinking of things like this and how I would handle it. And if course now that she is here I wouldn't trade her for any boy.

Thanks for all of the great comments...will keep you posted :)

Perverts use chat rooms, not social networking websites:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2265571,00.asp

Only 7% of statutory rape in this country is Internet-related... your next door neighbor, a family member, a friend, a teacher... is more likely to harm your daughter... a thousand times more likely than someone on MySpace.

Number of children that just vanish every year in the U.S. - kidnapped by random strangers? 60,000

Of those, how mnay related to MySpace? Zero

The socal media hysteria on the part of parents and the media and detoured attention away from where the real threat is... people children know already... maybe even related to. Ugly truth... yes it is... but true nonetheless.

What should be taken from this is parents need to wisen up and learn about these sites and teach their kids to social network responsibiliy.

MySpace is not dangerous... and the vast majority of teens use privacy settings, don't chat with strangers or accept friend requests from strangers.

Also, Facebook is not safer... maybe even more dangerous because you have to use your real name. MySpace is leading the charge to find perverts online... a pioneer working with law enforcement, the goverment, and nonprofits... this kind of coverage about MySpace is getting so old!


"It is very difficult to force MySpace or Facebook, which have hundreds of millions of profiles, to monitor each one," stated Daniel. "Parents should know what MySpace and Facebook are; they should know what a blog is; they should find out what their children are posting online; and they should teach them about the consequences and how to post responsibly."
- Daniel J. Solove, author of The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet.
"I'd tell parents to keep those lines of communication with your teenager as open as possible. Don't overreact or try to ban the Internet, because that's what sends teenagers underground, where they can run into even more trouble than if they're socializing online more openly, with you around."
- Anne Collier co-author of MySpace Unraveled: A Parent's Guide to Teen Social Networking.

First off, I don't think it's fair to accuse all teens of wanting to act like their role model Miley Cyrus. Myspace, facebook, etc was around and had pictures that were questionable long before last month! Besides, those pictures are way worse than what hers were!

Secondly, any teenager with even a ver low IQ knows how to hack those sites. It is a computer sign up process. You can tell it whatever you want to. If you want to be 21, you are! I know of kids who are as young as 10 who have regular sites connecting with adults. Even with their 10-year-old picture on the front page. The computer has no way to tell the difference. If you report them, it does not make a difference unless you can prove they are not that age, and unless you are a parent, you can't.

Nothing has changed due to Miley Cyrus, or other more questionable role models.

Those options have always been there for today's teens, and they were employing them long ago.

The only thing you can do is understand you can oly monitor your own kids. Do a myspace search on all variations of their names, etc.....or simply trust them. Imagine that!

Um, you could not allow your daughter to have a myspace page. That would be the easiest answer. My girls are 13 and 10---way too young in my opinon to be on myspace, but as they continually tell me, all of their friends have pages.

lol the reality is many parents who think their kids don't have Myspace are wrong. They go to friends houses who have lax computer rules, computers in bedrooms etc. Then they create their profiles there.

I am more internet savvy than many of the parents I know. My computer has locks so that if it goes to sleep you need a password to get back on. My children have very limited internet capabilities - and yet my son managed to become a member of Gaia online. He just gave the wrong age etc. I only found it because I let him on my computer one evening and went on and did a history.

I made him show me the site and it was harmless. My son knows a lot about internet safety from me. But, if he can do it, other kids can and are.

My girls, ages 37, 35 and 24 are not naked on My Space. Neither are my grandaughters who are 19 and 12.

My grandsons at 18 and 15, have also managed to have My Space pages without taking off their clothes for a photo.

And....trust me on this.....I am NOT naked in any photos on MY My Space page either! LOL

I actually learn things that are going on in the lives of my kids on My Space that I might not have learned otherwise. They know I visit their pages every so often, and I'm on their Friends list.

I've actually had two long lost relatives, a niece and a half sister locate me through My Space.

Parents should not let minors have free access to the internet as a whole. My Space isn't the problem. Undersupervised kids are the problem.

I'm 24 years old and sometimes think I shouldn't even have a myspace, and I certainly know that if my husband and I had a daughter her's would be closely monitered!

thanks for the info...unfortunately...many, too many in fact, do not care what their children are much less what they are doing on line...most of these kids are looking for what their parents do not give them, attention. Some I will agree do it for just something innocent to do, while others abuse it just like everything else...if you are a parent and you do not excercise your right in doing what is necessary to see that your kid, your teen, the human you have custody of is being appropriate on line...then you get what you deserve, take time to see that they are being appropriate, they want guide lines and boundaries to be shown to them and if they do not like it, well, then...take these priveledges away, and when you get right down to it, they are nothing but priveledges, these phones, these computers, and the automobiles. There are many good kids out there, but the many more make it difficult for them because they think their breasts should be topics of discussion, and that sex is something they can look at without getting into trouble on line. There are so many perverts and sex offenders out there, your child could be next.

I told my daughter (17) if she ever wanted to meet somebody from the internet, I would go with her. That way, she does not have to sneak around.

For myself, I have meet several people from 'the web' (not for sex) and have found them to be nice ordinary people. There are predators but if you take precautions, you can use it to its greatest potential.

When I was younger, I would have loved to have had access to something like the internet! Now, I see some of the pictures young girls are posting and think, "Wow, that is somebody's daugther...I wonder how they would feel if they saw that!"

As a parent, your best bet is to have open communication with your kids, and istill your values as much as possible. Kids need to see consistency from parents. Unfortunately, with so much easy access to nudity on the net, I don't think it holds the same shock value it did for us. (Until their "private" picture gets copied and pasted, and sent to everyone's cell phones...but by the time they realize their mistake...it's too late.)

I don't have any daughters or children so NO they aren't posting naked images on MySpace. Furthermore, I think that site is terrible in more ways than I care to list here.

you cannot stop your kids from getting on these spaces as they have access to most of them at school.. so you cannot control them.. but my suggestion is you do searches now and then on sites like this and others and put them on your list of friends so you can periodically check their account.. I did that with my daughter and when i found offense stuff of kids i knew.. i immediately reported it to their parents..

My space is not just for kids and teens anymore, adults have some good content out there also, many promote their business. check out www.myspace.com/raylanfear. Most teens will rebel and find a way to have a myspace page. Think it is far better to work with them on having a respectful site, and reach an agreement to monitor it with them. Its give them responsiblity. Its a far, far differenct World now, both good and bad, but the Internet and social networking sites are here to stay.

My kids will be allowed to have memberships at social sites and others like it but I will have their passwords and any other necessary info.

I don't let my teen on the computer unless I'm sitting there with her. Too many kids at her school are not being supervised, so I know that if I don't supervise my teen, she'll think it's okay to be "free" on the internet.

kids also can't rebel if you have services that block sites and lock the computer when you don't want it to come on. At first my daughter thought it wasn't fair, but now she seems to be much more interested in being a kid, reading, and doing activities that are supervised.

I don't think it's all that big a deal. Myspace censors things, so while you can show pictures of like a swimsuit or low cut top or something, nothing can go up that's actually obscene. I think a did a little bit of that when I was like 15 (I am 19 now) but I had fun and nothing came of it. People worry about internet creeps. But unless you're an idiot and put personal info up, no one can find you anyway. And do you think creepy dudes don't check out teenage girls in real life? I don't think parents should interfere with this stuff though unless your child is actually so stupid that they are meeting Myspace people in person or giving out personal info. But you know, the whole time I was on Myspace I only used it to talk to people I knew in real life. I wasn't trying to meet people on Myspace, and I wasn't looking for attention from strangers. I just had real life friends and acquaintances as my "friends". So, if they see a picture of me sticking my butt out and making a kissy face or whatever, that's ok with me.