MySpace Age Verification - for Parents

unlametheweak writes "North Carolina is thinking of the children by passing a law requiring parents to verify they are parents before letting their children onto social networking sites. Notwithstanding the whole concept of an Internet ID for people in general; children are now being tracked by cellular phones with GPS, spied upon with Parent Controls (MS Vista has built-in parental spyware), and also strategically placed Nanny Cams, keyboard loggers, etc. 'Few of the proposals we've seen so far seem like good ways to [protect children], but North Carolina's approach at least has the virtue of novelty--unlike most video game legislation, which relies on similar rhetoric but has been almost universally struck down by the courts, sometimes at great cost to the states.' Is the zoo-like Minority Report world in which children are growing up in today doing more harm than good? How will this affect a 14 year old, much less a 17 year old "child"?"

Re:17 year olds are not children

[brunascle]

then, in your opinion, at what age does this immaturity magically disappear?

Re:Oh come on...

[N3WBI3]

Let put this in the realm of IT:

You can create good policies, you can create great efficient and useful documentation on policies and procedures for users, and you can have info sessions to help personally education users. None of these things is a substitute for good traffic monitoring and anti-virus software. Of course you need to educate kids, empower them to grow and mature, turn control over a little at a time but you have stewardship over their lives for a season and while you cant make them good people or protect them from everyone you sure as heck should try..

Re:Sigh

[drasfr]

I have never been in favor of spying... I hate that in fact. I am a very strong advocate of free speech and freedom... but I would have to say after an incident that happen in my personal life my view of underage online is different.

My girlfriend's daughter is 11. She opened up a myspace profile with very suggestive photos and a stated age she was .... 16! now imagine the kind of answers and people talking to her. She knew perfectly what she was doing as she was hiding it and showing us a fake 'parent-approved' myspace profile when we were asking her... But we caught her... of course, the second we caught her, we deleted her profile and removed myspace access from home. Now the main issue is that she is not dumb and she may open another profile with another name from outside but hopefully after we lectured her she will not do it and understood the consequence of her behavior.

Now I wish there was a way for a parent to valide a myspace profile of someone under 18. If someone under 18 signs up THEN if should be required to be approved by a VERIFIED parent AND having the parent's profile linked up on myspace or something equivalent. I would support that.

Re:Nice FUD

[wwahammy]

Ya no kidding. The parental controls in Vista are tame compared to some of the programs that the feds anti-drug website suggest. The one's recommended by the feds run in the background without indicating to the target that they are being tracked. Vista's parental controls always has an icon on the taskbar so a person knows the parental controls are on and their actions are being recorded. Anytime an action is blocked a window pops up to explain what is happening.

I don't think parental controls are a great solution but if they have to exist Microsoft seems to have found the right balance.

Re:17 year olds are not children

[Anonymous Coward]

"...YUM-YUM: What good would that do? He's my guardian, and he wouldn't let me marry you!
NANKI POO: But I would wait until you were of age!
YUM-YUM: You forget that in Japan girls do not arrive at years of discretion until they are fifty.
NANKI-POO: True; from seventeen to forty-nine are considered years of indiscretion....

The MIKADO - W. S. Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan

Facebook what?

[drgonzo59]

Why do children need to be on social networking sites? Why can't they just invite their friends over and talk to them face to face. I didn't have facebook and myspace growing and I turned out alright (and I am not that old). Billions of people in the world manage to live happy lives without myspace or facebook, if they can do it, so can the kids. Buy them some books, a puzzle kit or install a basketball hoop outside and let them play. This whole thing about facebook and all these sites is just ridiculous. If the kids just have to have a computer, don't connect it to the net, and then let them do "research" when the parents are home on the living-room computer.

Re:Sigh

[TheRaven64]

Honestly in my home there will never be a computer which is not locked down and in the family room.

So, you want your children to grow up with no expectation of privacy? I had my own computer from about the age of 11. It was an old 8086 that my father's company had decided was no longer needed. I learned simple programming. Eventually, I got a 386 laptop in exchange for some web design (very simple stuff, back when Netscape 2.0 was very new). I got a 14.4kbaud modem for a birthday (13 or 14, I think), and an internet connection. When I was around 15, my parents got a second phone line put in to my room, so I didn't tie up the main line while I was on the Internet (I had to pay for the calls, they paid the line rental. This was back when you paid about 1p/minute for the call to the ISP off-peak). At no point was my computer use monitored, but:

1. My parents would talk to me about what I'd seen on the Internet (they'd ask if I'd read anything interesting, or seen something they'd seen referenced on the news).
2. Occasionally while I was online, they would knock on my door, and ask if they could come in.
3. They talked to me before about trusting people I met and things I read online.

There is only one lesson that parents can teach that has any value; every action has consequences, and you need to evaluate the consequences first. If I wanted to do something stupid online, then I could, but they made sure that I understood what the consequences would be (e.g. arrange to meet strangers online can lead to getting abused / murdered). As a result, I chose not to, with the exception of a few quite ill-informed usenet posts that I hope Google hasn't cached...

Re:The wisdom of our ancestors...

[LihTox]

I will agree with this in part: I think teenagers would benefit from more opportunities to be productive members of society. Some teenagers already do this: they do community service, or they're on sports teams (which entertains the community), or they write software, or what have you. But I suspect that some of that "teenage angst" comes from a life without meaning, a life dedicated to studying and being tested on subjects of no interest, and to playing the cruel social games that go on in high school. Some kids are playing a waiting game ("I can't wait until I graduate/move out/get a job/get a car."), which brings to mind Lennon's adage "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."

That doesn't mean that we give 14-year-olds cars or beer or spouses or apartments or full-time jobs. Their brains *are* still developing, and they still need the guidance of their parents. But give them more opportunities for meaning.

Just MHO--I'm 31 in case I sound like a teenager fighting the system. ;)

Re:Sigh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Excellent point.

Every day, many, *many* teens and pre-teens are sexually harassed at school, at home and in their neighborhood. Many are raped.

Really, go look at rape statistics for American teens. They're not pretty. And these are happening in real life, at home, at parties, even at school.

Now go look at rape statistics for MySpace. If you can find enough cases to warrant statistical analysis. And how many teens use MySpace? Almost all of them have tried it.

The data is clear: the Internet *PROTECTS* kids. Kids are safer chatting on-line then they are playing basketball at the park, than they are at parties, than they are spraying graffiti, than they are driving around drunk at night. Kids learn more valuable skills using the internet than they learn talking on the phone, or playing street hockey.

People who want kids off the internet are holding back our nation's progress, are putting our kids in danger, and are essentially violating free speech laws.

Re:Facebook what?

[bluemonq]

Ugh. Sorry, I was a bit careless with the closing tags. This should be easier to read.

Oh, so we should let them have sex with adults since they are 10 and let them drink since they are 5 because, hey who is Uncle Sam to say when they are mature enough.

Actually, I was referring to the mentality of "Think of the children" to justify any and all measure made in the name of protecting the young ones, but the instant the clock strikes midnight and the individual turns 18, they suddenly are judged to be capable of making all sorts of judgements that moments ago somehow couldn't.

You'd be surprised how enjoyable reading is...

Reading? I hope you're not reading any Heinlen, Crichton, Tolkien, or the like. If you are, wouldn't that be time better spent learning about and trying to advance quantum mechanics; or reading up on national health policy, and advocating reform of the tortuous system that is Medicare; or even examining what you can do about the ginormous loss of biodiversity in recent times? I enjoy reading. I adore it. But, frankly, unless you have a very narrow selection in your reading material, I'd be willing to bet that a not unconsiderable amount of your reading material isn't much better than network TV.

But the point was that some individuals are not responsible and some individuals are inherently vulnerable (children).

And my point was that the line drawn between those whom you assert to be "inherently vulnerable" and those who aren't is incredibly arbitrary. IIRC, individuals used to work, marry and bear children when they were 12, and held to be as just as responsible for themselves as I (early 20s) and you are (probably older than me). I'm not saying it was any better in the "golden, olden days"; rather, what is there to stop the line from being redrawn at 17 or 22? There are plenty of 21 year-olds at my college who are incredibly irresponsible with their time and health at least part of the time; if you need any proof of that, visit the fraternity district of a large university after an American football game against their rival.