Parent's Survival Guide - MySpace
MySpace and Facebook are social networking sites that are exptremely popular with teenagers and other young adults. For more information, please see our special MySpace and Facebook page.
It is important for parents to let their child know that parental monitoring of MySpace, in general, is to promote safety and connection. By notifying your child of this, it will hopefully help alleviate the perception of spying or "snooping," and send messages of trust and respect and how much you value your relationship with him/her.
First, open a MySpace account. It's quite simple and free. During this process, it is suggested that you don't use your real name or age and keep your email account private.
After you have submitted your information, go to the top of the page and click on search. This will help you possibly locate your child's account and/or some of his/her friends' accounts. You may search by name, school, state, zip code, etc. Parents should be advised that children may not use their real names on MySpace, so be patient when searching.
During the search process, you may also be able to see the pictures that your child is using on his/her MySpace pages. Warning: be prepared to be surprised or even possibly shocked at the pictures that you may discover on any of the MySpace pages.
Another part of MySpace pages that may interest parents are the profile and feedback sections. The profile section will allow you to see how your child may be presenting himself/herself online and the feedback section may give a glimpse into who is communicating with your child through MySpace.
This is an on going process that may require daily checks on your part in order to stay in step with your child. It is possible to visit web pages and then "erase" any footsteps leading to where you've been. Go to the "tools" or "options" tab at the top of your Web browser for more sugeestions on deleting bookmarks, "cookies" and tracking history.
If you feel you need more help with this, you may bebefit from the services of an Internet Safety Coach. Please e-mail us for more information.
