Here's what a few of you had to say about Kevin Poulsen's "Scenes From the MySpace Backlash." To post a remark online in our feedback forums, enter your comments in the text box at the end of any story (registration required). Additionally, you can give our Skype feedback line a call at (415) 992-NEWS (415-992-6397), or message us on Skype at our user name: wirednews.
Re: Scenes From the MySpace Backlash
By Kevin Poulsen
From: Mike
I just wanted to say that as a 17-year-old senior in high school with a myspace, I pretty much agreed with everything you said in your article. Though I know there are certainly dangers and sketchy things going on on myspace, it is still quite innocent at heart (or at least it used to be), and it was great to see someone show both sides of the issue.
Your interviews were intriguing and I was interested to read about some of the other cases involving myspace "scandals." Kids at our school have started making fake profiles for teachers, and there is also a fake one for another teacher on the facebook community site. I've had enough scandals on myspace. (It nearly lost me a job. Long story short: A comment was misunderstood and because the whole work force at the movie theater had myspaces, it quickly escalated out of control. But I didn't like that job, anyway.) I'm considering deleting mine, but it was nice to hear that there are teachers and parents out there who were not all against myspace. It's simply misunderstood.
Well, anyway, I just wanted to give you kudos on the great article and perhaps show a little insight into a student/teenagers perspective on your article. I figured it couldn't hurt.
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Re: Scenes From the MySpace Backlash
By Kevin Poulsen
From: Ted Sbardella
Kevin Poulsen must have a chronic illness necessitating medical marijuana. This is really the only explanation for this. Anyone who can speak and works at Berkeley and is not on the Seti@home project has some form of chronic illness. I like this quote:
UC Berkeley researcher Danah Boyd says it's a bad idea. "Don't go on and engage in surveillance. That makes things really hard for kids to engage with you as a parent." Instead, Boyd recommends parents talk with their youngsters, and ask their teens to show them their profile, if they have one.
This is the sort of parenting that makes for legal bills. I parent from the Guantanamo Bay school (of thought). My children are required to wear orange jumpsuits and have loud music blasted in their rooms at all times. I keep my children out of the court system or drug rehab and I am proud. In order to do that I need information, so I go through the room monitor any correspondence. I look at the phone logs a couple of times a week and call the numbers not among my contacts. Seems a bit much, but then (my daughter's) friends do not seem to mind and neither does she because I am helpful and funny and she knows that I love her (and want her to be very wealthy so she can "lend" us money when her mother and I are retired.)
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Re: Scenes From the MySpace Backlash
By Kevin Poulsen
From: Brice Shatzer
I just wanted to send you a message letting you know that I really enjoyed your article. I really felt that it shed some light on the myspace phenomenon and the over-blown concern about safety. With a media that feeds society nothing but fear, its nice to see someone pointing out what is actually happening. Kudos to you, good sir.
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Re: Scenes From the MySpace Backlash
By Kevin Poulsen
From: Anonymous
Parents wake up. MySpace is just another website, however the intention is for networking. Has any adult ever used a networking site like Monster? Remember, we were all teenagers at one time. Unless what the teen is doing is actually illegal, or an actual threat of violence, then we must accept and respect their space whether it's on the web or in real life.
I am the parent of a teenager in college and he uses myspace as a networking system. If more parents would involve themselves in their child's life at an earlier age maybe they would have a more trusting relationship. Develop a relationship with your teenager, try to understand what makes them tick. Talk, share, communicate. Then maybe all this will be what it really is. A way to socialize and communicate with their peers.
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Re: Scenes From the MySpace Backlash
By Kevin Poulsen
From: obsidian743
I believe this to be a vacuous attempt to appear subjective on the supposed innocence of the site. "Shocking to adult eyes," "music-sharing," "social-discovery services," "passion of youth." Talk about positive spin. I suppose kids will be kids, right? And we all know that's OK, isn't it? They're just expressing themselves.
I remember when I was 13 and in my room I had a Van Halen poster adjacent to my awesome Metallica poster. It was badass -- it really helped accent the effect of the strobes and disco lights blarring in sync to rap music. Sadly, I also remember the time a 43-year-old man came over and touched my pee-pee when I was dancing naked in my room.
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Re: Scenes From the MySpace Backlash
By Kevin Poulsen
From: butterflygrrrlie
The way I see it, if parents aren't doing a good enough job or are unable to monitor their childrens' activities, they had better hope that they have instilled enough good sense, values and self-esteem that the kids know better than to lie about their ages online, or do stupid things like meet with strangers that they met on myspace or any other site. Kids did not come to this planet for us, they came through us. We have a duty to teach them right from wrong, and then let them go.
As far as "offensive" things posted online about teachers, faculty or other students -- so fucking what? Especially if they don't do it on school grounds, the First Amendment protects them.
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Re: Scenes From the MySpace Backlash
By Kevin Poulsen
From: brlewis90
If your kid's ready to network with strangers, there's no problem with myspace. There are teens who can take care of themselves in that environment. If you're comfortable with having your child's full name, date of birth and town be easily accessible to the world, no problem. New profiles are created with sequential IDs and start out public by default, so it's easy to find them even if the intention is to make them private. This design does not seem to take the privacy of users seriously, as myspace insists. Also, if "kids collect online friends like baseball cards," they probably won't make their profiles private anyway. For some teens, a situation where they think they can gain prestige by networking with strangers is a bad one.
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Re: Scenes From the MySpace Backlash
By Kevin Poulsen
From: Anonymous
Parents and teens, it's time to get real!
Parents: Myspace is no more or less harmful than anything else your children can get into. As long as you have been involved in your children's lives in a positive way and taught them responsibility, good decision making skills, and discipline, then you probably have much less to worry about than you think.
Teens: Your cries that parents should completely back off and let you do as you please are way off base. You know that they cannot do that without becoming bad parents. Besides, you are *much* more vulnerable at your age than you think.
A parent's job is to mentor you, guide you and care for you. This includes *reasonable* amounts of monitoring (which does mean snooping under some circumstances) and setting *reasonable* rules and limits. Realize we're walking a tight-rope here. Too strict and you lose out on valuable experiences, you don't develop your fullest potential, and you have difficulty building self-confidence. Too loose and you don't develop self-discipline, you probably get badly hurt physically and emotionally, and you have difficulty building self-confidence.
Anyway, just my two cents.
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