Tweens Taking Advantage of Social Networking Sites

By Alexa Kuzmich

How young is too young for a child to join a social networking site like MySpace or Facebook? With the launch of sites like Walt Disney Co.’s Disnye Xtreme Digital and Club Penguin, younger children are being targeted to promote themselves on the Internet.
This increase in younger children using social networking sites is prompting concern among both parents and young adults, who believe something needs to be done to protect our children.
Kevin O’Brien, 21 of Whitman is unsure of what can be done to protect children from the dangers of exploiting themselves on the internet.
“I don’t think you can really control it. As long as there are chat rooms and blogs, there will always be creepy individuals,” said O’Brien.
According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, approximately one in seven youths aged 10-17 years are sexually solicited in some way while online.
This could, in part, be due to the fact that so many pre-teens are posting themselves on websites like MySpace and Facebook.
According to the PEW Internet and Life Project, in 2007, 54 percent of teen girls who were online were posting pictures of themselves on the web. Girls are not the only culprits however, the same is true of boys with 40 percent posting pictures of themselves.
Overall 47 percent of wired teens are posting pictures of themselves online in places where other people, including people they do not know, can see and comment regularly.
According to the Federal Trade Commission, sites dealing with children under the age of 13 must follow the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). This act requires parental consent before collecting, maintaining, or using a child’s information.
While COPPA is a good start, many people question its effectiveness. The responsibility, as most feel, lies in the hands of the parents.
Paul E. O’Brien, 54, of Whitman, says his own son who is now in college, had open access to the internet, but their computer was in a place where he could be monitored at all times.
“It is the parents’ responsibility to be aware of what their children are doing. Period,” said O’Brien.
Ben Downey, 21, a student at Stonehill College in Easton, has been a user of Facebook for three years and agrees the new law is a good start, but it may not be effective long term.
“I think it’s up to the household and the parents,” said Downey, “it is very easy to lie about your age because all you have to do is click yes I am above 14.”
Meghan Driscoll, 22 of Bridgewater, said she thinks that more needs to be done in terms of monitoring children while they use the internet.
“My mom never monitored me while I was online and I knew how to get around a lot of the blocks that AOL had set up when we had the computer. Parents should enforce that the computer is a learning tool and to participate with their child in the experience so they know exactly what they are seeing,” said Driscoll.
While most people are joining sites like Facebook and MySpace for legitimate networking reasons, there is always a danger that people with ill intentions are out there.
Tom Woods, 21 a student at Stonehill College in Easton, has been a member of Facebook for two years and uses the site frequently.
“I joined to keep in touch with people and kill time in between classes,” said Woods.
Like Woods, most college students have grown to use sites like this as a means to procrastinate.
However, Woods understands the danger of allowing young children to access sites like this where they could be misrepresenting themselves to a whole slew of strangers.
Like woods, Amanda Carnevale, 21, a student at Stonehill College and a member of such sites, also believes that they are not the right place for young children.
Carnevale has been a member of both MySpace and Facebook since freshman year of college.
The sites provide her with a way to keep in touch with friends who go to school in other places.
While she commends the initial regulations put in place, Carnevale thinks more should be done to protect children online.
“There should be regulations so that children won’t get themselves into trouble and wind up talking to creepy old men pedophiles,” Carnevale said, “and the parents should know what their kids are doing online.”