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April 18, 2006
stalking, inc.
If you're a parent and haven't seen the culture of myspace.com, you really need to take a look. This is not your usual "the sky is falling!" media alarm about new technologies. This really is a danger.
I was first exposed to the site through my students. Essentially a bunch of free personal web sites wherein kids can post photos, blogs, and messages to one another, the service is neither new nor unique—except for the wildly popular subculture it bred.
Witness my horror: a student showed me her myspace, and through it, any miscreant could find countless photos of her, her full name (including middle), her mother's maiden name, her parents' home address, her boyfriend's full name, her zip code, her email address, her employer's name, her birth date, her work and education history, who got soooooo drunk last weekend that he did untoward things, and where they were all meeting again this Saturday night at 8.
"Are you completely deranged?" I asked. "Have you ever heard of identity theft? No? How about predators? Employer background checks?"
This piqued my curiosity, and soon I was easily finding out about who was having sex with whom after taking several hits of ecstasy. The kids have no filter whatsoever. The more boastful and explicit they can make the site, the better—this material is, after all, intended for the consumption of their friends. Unfortunately, unlike the boasts and posing of yesteryear, it's not in someone's basement but in the public domain.
Parents, want to have a panic attack? Try this exercise. Pick a random bagger at your grocery store. Note their first name. Then go to myspace and search for that name. Then to narrow your search results, specify the zip code of the store. More often than not, myspace thoughtfully leads you straight to the bagger. You'll see his whole drug history, if not her boudoir photos. It's utterly horrifying in its ease.
Being both invulnerable and at the zenith of human intellect, just like we were, this generation of kids clearly has no conception that they're making themselves easy targets for thieves, HR departments and worse. When the kids are fired or raped or killed, parents will doubtlessly blame myspace. I'll blame the parents.
posted by john at 7:09 AM • permalink