Does MySpace Really Care about Protecting our Children?

I would like to start by saying that This is not just a " MySpace " Issue. This is an issue for all Community and Social Networking sites. MySpace can set the tone to where the industry can succesful make a difference.

At the end of the day, its the Mom's and Dad's that will make the real difference and montior our children closely.


A New York Times blog named MySpace to Let Parents Block Their Children From Joining notes that attorneys general of 49 states are announcing a partnership with MySpace to fight sexual predators on social networks by letting parents submit the e-mail addresses of their children, so the company can prevent anyone from using that address to set up a profile.

Being in the Online Media business, I believe this is just a very poor way to fix a very serious problem.
Its rather obvious that the Attorney Generals office along with public support is pushing MySpace to act. MySpace, which is owned by Fox probably could not care less about protecting Children from online Bullies, or Sexual Predators. If they did care for a second, they would of taken a pro-active approach to at least address the issue and come up with a plan to assure Parents that we are here to protect. You would think that MySpace would put more of a urgency on this issue in the past, but it takes an Attorney Generals announcement, countless kids being taken advantage of, and in some cases, Death.

So how do you fix something like this?

This is not a easy question to answer, but one thing I am sure of is that having Parents submit email addresses to Myspace is not a fix.

Lets look at this.

Does anyone think for a second many children have only 1 email address, or their parents know of every email address their children have. Yes, I understand as a parent, we should know all the email addresses our kids have, and everything they do, but realistically, that just may be impossible. Why? In this day it is just so easy to get a free email address from Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail. Children just understand how to work around this system.


I have a real fix I would present to our friends at MySpace... and all the other social networking sites.

Instead of Parents submitting Email addresses, make it easy for parents to submit their home IP Address. MySpace can easily set up a program which easily allows parents to recognize their computers IP Address, which will allow them to submit to Myspace and allow MySpace to block your child's profile. Or you can go here to find out your IP address.

I would even take this a step further, Along with Submitting the IP Address, They would need to list the School they are attending. This will allow for a master Data Base of all Schools, In which the Schools Administrator can share the Ip addresses so the children cannot set up " new profiles " in School. In a perfect world, Schools should not even allow any access to any Social Networking Site, but that may not be the case. If the Parents put enough pressure on the School administrators, they will get everything they need to make sure that their kids are protected.

This by no means will fixed the issue overnight, but it may be a good start, and it will show me that MySpace really does care about protecting our children.

Whats your Opionion on this? Dont be shy