Anyone who has visited MySpace or Xanga will be aware that many teenagers, typically aged 11-14, are posting information that would be better restricted to their school friends, not shared with the world. When -- or if -- their parents find out, they may well be alarmed, as G Jeffrey MacDonald reports in The Christian Science Monitor.
Internet stalkers have killed at least four minors in the past three years, and law enforcement authorities count about 5,000 reports of attempted sexual predation over the Internet in the past year, according to Parry Aftab, executive director of Wiredsafety.org, an Internet safety organization.
Given such statistics, parents need to get over the feeling that they're invading their children's privacy by reading their blogs, Ms Aftabsays. She believes that parents must bring their judgment to bear on the content of what's posted. "When you get hormones pumping, [minors] are operating the heavy machinery of the Internet under impaired judgment."
Others fear, however, that certain precautions could amount to swatting a fly with a sledgehammer, and could take a hefty toll on family life. The likelihood of tragedy is far greater whenever a child rides in a car or goes swimming than when he or she posts his or her name, photograph, and other personal information on the Internet, says Laurence Steinberg, an expert in adolescent psychology at Temple University and author of "The 10 Basic Principles of Good Parenting."
Comment: This article's major flaw is that it doesn't point out the obvious technical solution. Teen bloggers can, in fact, limit access to their blogs to selected friends on their instant messaging buddy list. That way, their words are only accessible to the five or 10 or 50 people with a legitimate interest, not to potential stalkers.
What parents should be doing is steering their teen bloggers towards systems that allow this, including MSN Spaces and Yahoo 360.
