Making MySpace YOUR Space

As you may or may not have heard, we've been having a series of provocative discussions in 8th grade about the uses and misuses of online websites such as MySpace and Facebook. We began over a week ago with extended conversations in the two core groups after reading a rather disturbing article about a mother of a teen girl who posed as a young man in a MySpace webpage and so harassed her daughter's former friend that the girl took her life.

(See http://www.parentdish.com/2007/11/18/teenage-suicide-over-myspace/ for an online description of the incident.)

While we all agree that such events are sadly sensational and even a bit "over the top", it was eye-opening to realize how easy it is to fall into questionable practices with MySpace-esque websites. The girls sagely cited the tendency to speak in a manner that they might never consider were they face to face with a given peer, and a thorough examination of aspects of cyber-bullying ensued. We concluded that MySpace provides fertile ground for practicing (perfecting?) the relational aggression that girls are known for. Studens also commented on the addictive attraction that such sites seem to have. Some admitted that they've considered deleting their MySpace/Facebook accounts, but can't quite seem to muster whatever it takes to do so! The psychological "variable response mechanism" is definitely at play here!

On Friday we watched the various segments of Frontline's "Growing Up Online," stopping in between each "chapter" to briefly comment on the content. We will continue this particular investigation when we reconvene on Monday. It occurred to me that an excellent family activity would be to view the program online together and discuss the chapters "en famille." This might provide a most effective platform for talking about an issue that seems to be causing some dissent between the generations! Should you decide to try this, I'd be most interested to hear how it goes! (Just add your voice to this blog through the "comment" option below!)

(You'll find Frontline's program at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/kidsonline/ This site also contains quite a bit of pertinent and interesting information about teen-attracting technology.)