Editorial: MySpace.com perilous for kids?

Friday, Feb. 24, 2006 | 7:23 a.m.

As the popularity of social-networking Web sites increases, parents are discovering that the Internet-based communities can bring not only new friends, but also sexual predators and scammers into their children's lives.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the most popular of these sites is MySpace.com. Its monthly traffic has doubled to 36 million users in the past six months. It was the eighth most-visited site on the Web in January. MySpace allows users - nearly 20 percent of whom are younger than 17 - to create for free personal Web sites where they can share their passions, dreams, photographs and anything else they care to reveal about themselves.

But in the course of making new friends, some also are making dangerous liaisons, authorities say. Police in Middletown, Conn., for example, are investigating complaints that five men in their 20s posing as teenagers contacted MySpace users as young as 11 and sexually assaulted them.

Children younger than 14 aren't supposed to use the site, but many lie about their ages to participate. Others post suggestive and lewd photographs of themselves. Although MySpace and other sites prohibit such postings, teens make the photos available through links from their sites.

Parents who once fretted over a child's first name being visible on the outside of his school backpack now worry about children telling all to strangers over the Internet. Youths must be careful about what they post.

Those who operate MySpace are taking some steps to improve safety. The site blocks certain communications features for users ages 14 to 16 and has kicked off about 200,000 users through a program that locates clues that suggest a user might be underage.

But MySpace doesn't verify users' ages. "No one on the Internet with a free site has ever come up with a way to do that," Chris DeWolf, MySpace's chief executive, told the Journal.

Someone should try. Site operators also should block the terms predators use to locate youngsters. Parents need to keep tabs on what their kids are up to, but even the most vigilant parents cannot verify everything or totally block the strangers who e-mail their children. They need some help.