Parenting in 'MySpace' Era Challenging

Aug. 11, 2006 (New York City) -- As social networking Internet sites like MySpace.com continue to grow in popularity, parents need to take steps to ensure their children's safety, experts said Thursday at a media briefing sponsored by the National Parent and Teachers Association (PTA).

While these sites do have some positive attributes, they can also be easily accessed by predators.

That's why parentingparenting in the MySpace generation has its own set of unique challenges, says Douglas Levin, senior director of education policy for Cable in the Classroom, a Washington-based program designed to help schools take advantage of educational cable programming and technology.

"Social networking should not cause you to panic," he tells WebMD. "Make sure your kids know not to post personally identifying information -- including pictures and videos of themselves -- and not to meet anyone in person that they have only met online. And to let you know whenever they see something that makes them uncomfortable."

Parental Action

The good news is that 94% of parents or legal guardians polled have taken actions to ensure their kids' safe use of the Internet, according to results of a new survey presented here. These actions include monitoring their children's online activity, setting time limits, talking to their children about safe usage, and installing software to block certain online activities.

The telephone survey included 374 adults aged 18 and over who are the parents or legal guardians of children aged 8 to 18; 90% of parents said they think they should have the responsibility of ensuring Internet safety.

But in today's day and age, kids may be more tech-savvy than their parents. Only one-third of parents polled think they are "very knowledgeable" when it comes to educating their children about how to use the Internet safely and responsibly.

The poll was commissioned by Cable in the Classroom and was conducted at the end of July.

Setting Ground Rules

"For teens and tweens, it's just important to set ground rules and it's also important that if kids do have a MySpace page or a page on one of the other social networking sites that parents go and look at it and monitor what their kids are doing online and who they are talking to," Levin tells WebMD. "Parents need make the Internet a safer place for kids by disabling things like instant messenger [IM] and chat [functions]."

Age matters, he says. "I think it is much easier to protect children who are preteen [but] really the kids who are engaging in the riskiest behaviors are those who are in their teens."

For the younger set, parental controls such as keeping computers in common areas of the home and installing software or filters to block inappropriate sites can make a big difference, he tells WebMD.

But these measures may not work for tech-savvy teens who can bypass filters and access the Internet from outside the home. "In this case, the best defense as a parent is to have frequent and open conversations with kids about the challenges of being online," he says. "Schools really should be a resource for parents. And educators now know kids are connected a lot," he says. In the new survey, 71% of parents polled said they thought that schools should bear the responsibility for ensuring the safety of children online.