Myspace, Friendster, Tagged, Hi5, Facebook, Sconex, blackplanet and 100s of others social networking sites have been exploded in 2005 to present. For many, if you don't have any of those, boy, you're not up-to-date.
I admit that I have myspace, sconex, hi5, facebook and tagged. However, I rarely use any of them. People from my school just add me onto their list just to show that they are popular. The more people they have on the list the better...it means that they are popular or have a lot of friends.
Many of you know issues that surrounded by myspace.com. Predators are out on these social networking sites especially myspace, looking for young people for sex. Kids as young as 12 can have a myspace by simply lie on their date of birth. So how safe are these sites? Very little. So what if you can set it private? People are just going to ask you to add and it's up to you to accept them. My youngest sister for example, she set her myspace private and yet accepts just about everyone who ask to add him/her. Yesterday, I found out about it so I told her to delete her myspace in which she did.
Let's talk about myspace...
Because there are many controversies around myspace.com, my question is should myspace just shut itself down?
Why did I ask that? Well, if a business gets a bad reputation, usually it closes down its business. Many parents see that myspace is a bad web site. As one of the progressiveu users said that she blocked myspace becuase it looks uneducational and for the safety of her child. So far, myspace is the most popular social networking site that gets on the news daily (mostly in a negative way). Plus, anybody can get a myspace as long as they lie their real age. Even if you try to set it private...you can just accept anybody who "wants to get to know you." Remember myspace is a "place for friends." So, anybody can be friend with you and yes including child predator.
Another point, in my economics class, my teacher was reading an article from Sunday NY Times. It talked about job applicants. From what I remember, my teacher said company executive and workers check their applicants' background through myspace. How? well, they can google your name (on google.com) and bam! your name would come up. If you have a myspace and you put your real name on it...oh boy! they are going to go your site and read everything about you that you and your people put on your myspace. (I'll put up the article, if I can find it)
"Why don't we just shut myspace down and things would be much better?" My friend asked.
Well honey, it's not that easy. Aside from the negativity of myspace, this site actually helps the underground artists to be able to sell themselves and promote their music online. Myspace is like a way of keeping in touch with other people including high school friends and others. My year book, on the autograph section, people write stuff, wish me the best of luck in college and instead of giving me their phone numbers or email address, they write their myspace sites as a way to reach them. How crazy is that? But it's true. Myspace is becoming another way of communicate people and close friends. Just simply put a comment on a person's page and write a shout out or something along the line.
So should myspace be shut down?
In my opinion, no. I think users should be more aware of the site and use it wisely. It's kindda retarded to say but "don't add people that you don't know." This way, you can get away from predators. Plus, try not to put your real name/ identity on myspace or anysite familiar to it. This way, you are safe from identity thief and stuff.
So what do you think?
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People need to get over the Myspace thing. Its not like every kid that belongs to it is getting raped. There is a risk with all online activities.
If users (ehrm, Parents) would get more of a clue about what their kids are doing on their PC's, instead of using the computer as a baby sitter, there would be much less of an issue.
and if the kids were a bit smarter about meeting total strangers in person, you'd hear less about it in the news..
I guess basically, if they were ALL a bit smarter, it would not be an issue!
yes its caused nothig but problems
The ask "Should we shut MySpace down?" question is right up there with "Should we shut the Internet down?", since people have been able to hook up with dangerous freaks and weirdos online for far longer than MySpace has been around. UseNet newsgroups, BBSs, AOL's early chat rooms and countless others today, Friendster and other similar sites, etc., etc., etc. For that matter, let's shut down all public parks and school playgrounds, 'cause you never know what kinds of dangerous-to-children nuts hang around those places, either. MySpace is, at its core, a simple networking Web site, not unlike Friendster and other very similar sites. Some such sites exist for more specific purposes, such as professional networking (such as LinkedIn.com or Ryze.com), random interest groups (Meetup.com), and other purposes. At their core, these are all amazingly convenient and valuable services that are very much the sort of benefits that the Internet has to offer everyone. But, just as with any other publicly-accessible beneficial tools (parks, schools, etc.), parents have to supervise where and what their kids are doing until those kids learn enough to handle them themselves. When are we, as a society of parents, going to get over this misdirected symptomatic mindset and start supervising our children and teaching them to think? Remember that long lost art and skill once known as parenting? It's not just a word... Parents who allow young children to surf unsupervised on the Internet are neglecting and endangering their children, much as though they were allowing them to play unsupervised in the parks or streets. Teach your child to be aware and intelligent enough to think for him/herself and know what to be careful of. But until s/he reaches that state of awareness and responsibility to your comfort and satisfaction, do not allow him/her to Web-surf unsupervised. Duh. I'm sorry if my tone is leaning toward the sharp, but I am thoroughly tired of parents expecting the world to do their jobs for them. Ask yourself: How are these young kids getting free access to MySpace? Solely because MySpace cannot verify ages? No. Someone's giving them unfettered Internet access before their ready to use it responsibly. The parents aren't teaching and supervising their children. And then we have the absurdity to wonder why those children are getting into trouble.
I'm glad that Thogek gets it. The OP's friend was totally out of line for suggesting that the site be shut down. It is the typical self-defeating style of thought that guesses that since there are greedy people, there should not be money, that since speed limits are broken, we should not have cars, and that since there is trash on the ground, packaging should be bare and perfunctory only, or we should revert to agrarianism. wrong, wrong: bad businesses do not give up: they get better!
also, we should not criticize businesses checking myspaces. Let them hire more competent employees. How would you feel as a business owner if there were a law forcing you to employ someone who diverged from your company's vision and reputation? you'd feel quite like the government was oppressing you unfairly, which would be correct. Also, I suspect lots of criticism of this practice is rooted in the wish of the party-ers and of those otherwise steeped in mindlessness to continue doing what they do while deeping a respectable job. They whine and seek outside governmental babysitting for their spinelessness. the grand birth of a leftist.
Michael Allen Yarbrough (PBUH)
I concur, good point!
I have facebook and myspace...i rarely use myspace, I think it's creepy. I like facebook bc it's a little more regimented, you actually know who people are, most of the time.
I think myspace is an excuse for kids to not make real friends. I think kids should be encouraged to have imagination, get off the computer and socialize and expereince things. Not sit on a webpage and color it all damn day.
I also think kids under 17 shouldn't have myspace...i think it gives too much freedom to those who aren't mature enough to use it properly. It opens the doors to maliscious people to take advantage.
Shut down myspace, then what's next? Nothing just ends once you begin a precedent. Precedents are dangerous.
Citizen Press Revolution
Parents need to take responsiblity, Myspace didnt make someone abduct their kid, so they dont need to blame it
Shut down Myspace? Something similar will take its place and the same "omg my kid got kidnapped by a pedophile" stories will pop up on 20/20.
Shutting down Myspace would be like shooting the messenger. And, for people who use it legitimately for networking (such as bands, school clubs, and human rights groups), they'd be punished because some kids are stupid and some adults unscrupulous.
I love myspace. I have ~150 friends, and I know ALL but 10. It is a great way to get to know classmates better, as well as pass on important information, via bulletins. I have fun on myspace.com, and I think it should not shut down. And to the teenage girls that get sexually assualted by an older adult that you meet on myspace, HAVE SOME COMMON SENSE!!!! You ever hear "do not talk to strangers"? if not, listen. myspace should not be shut down if a couple of people get hurt, out of the ~88 MILLION myspace users. I think that percentage is PRETTY GOOD. Myspace should not shut down for the STUPIDITY of dumb girls
I completely agree!!
I never let my schooling interfere with my education. - Mark Twain
I know every single person i befriend and like others i only use it to keep in contact with friends or people i meet when i travel.
Also to go along with others. Parent involvement is lacking in this contry. That is our problem.
Daria over and out!
I remember hearing the most profound of quotes from Gillian Anderson of the X-files on David Letterman. It was shortly after Y2K, and dave asked what her take on the whole scare was. It was so ironic that the audience reacted with a knee jerk"what are you crazy?" type of reaction. Gillian had to begin speaking slower and louder in mid-sentance with a sort of "would you people just shut up and listen to my point...?" She said that pc's;this alienating machine among others which keeps members of society in their respective homes ironically brought people together in fear of the uncertainty over y2k chaos. People now went and talked to/socialized with other people, sort of like before pc's and back to the origin of spoken word. I feel sad thinking how there's no going back. You can't even go live in the middle of knowwhere anymore:The satellites see everything. My take on the whole thing is like the force from star wars;Given free will, humans know the difference between good and evil. They have the power to choose. It is the evil in all of us which many times seems more convincing. I had a chance to be with a girl who was almost 17 when I was 19. I knew what was right, and chose what I knew to be right. Myspace is like giving your teenage kids some alchohol, leaving for a week, then trusting they won't drink it. It is freedom misused. There was a time when people left their doors open at night so a friend can come in and get a snack, or sleep over. There was a time we all said hi on the streets. Some days a child just learning to speak will say hi to me, and I'll think"Wow. Someday she'll notice people who get older don't say hi to one another anymore". I feel that it should be shut down, but at the same time who has the power to say it should be or not? Tommythesandwich
I laugh at questions like these. It's not MYSPACE's fault that your 14 year old daughter ended up meeting some guy thats old enough to be your father, from Mysapce. It's YOUR Fault for not seeing what your children are doing on the internet. Ya know, there are MANY tools out there to help you do that, without your kid knowing. BEtter to let them know though. Stop blaming the Internet. Blame the parents for not caring enough about their child to pay attention and protect them.
i would seriously be depressed if myspace shutdown. i would lead strikes and shit. myspace is my life. girls who ran away or got raped or whatever, shouldve used their heads. the rapists didn't pop out of the screen. that is all. MYSPACE ME ! =]
I am appalled that anyone would seriously consider shutting Myspace down; it ranks right up there with censoring movies, music, games, and books because you are too lazy to be a responsible parent and pay attention. The person who compared shutting down Myspace to shutting down the Internet made an excellent analogy. Any form of censorship is a slippery slope.
My 16yo daughter uses Myspace, as do all her friends, and she loves it. Now I am not by far a perfect parent, but I certainly do pay attention to my children's media consumption and online activities--which seems to be a trait sorely lacking in most parents these days. We have discussed online safety and potential dangers since my daughter was old enough to be on the computer--she knows our rules and expectations about online usage, and she knows that mom and dad will be checking in with her Myspace page regularly. Plus our computer is in the family room, not socked away in anyone's bedroom. I am actually very impressed with all the neat little stuff she has learned how to do so she could personalize her page. She enjoys showing me all the new things and she is very proud of her space, as she should be, and I wouldn't seek to take it away from her simply because some other people are neglectful idiots or worse. She finally convinced me to make my own page so we could be on each other's friend list, and in the process I even found an old friend from high school I hadn't seen in years. That's pretty nifty.
I think Myspace is much like anything else online: it can be a wonderful and constructive experience or it can be a danger, but the outcome depends on the common sense of the user (and the parents). Bottom line, parenting is not a spectator sport--you have to get involved. There are lots of dangers in the world, online and off, but I don't think the way to keep your kids safe from them is to bury your head in the sand and/or just censor everything. It is very sad what has happened to some young girls, but I certainly don't think that is the site's responsibility.
I think a lot of the problems with MySpace.com would be cleared up if people had to pay for their homepages with a credit card.
It would put an end to anonymous stalking and to young people having homepages their parents didn't know about.
I don't know that it will do much about people who want to pose half naked looking for sex, but it might make people who are posing half naked merley looking for attention think twice.
OK, but if MySpace has to shut itself down because people do stupid things with it, so do all the companies that make personal computers/macs, alcohol, televisions, pop, bottled water, matches, lighters, gasoline, cars, etc.
Everytime someone finds a misuse for a product doesn't mean that product should be shut down. There will always be stupid people, you can make it more stupid-proof but you can never stop it from becoming a problem. Myspace is doing all it can to protect these less than intelligent kids, but they have no obligation to. It's the parent's responsibility to watch their kids. It's not MySpace's fault that the parents/kids are total dumbasses.
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If a society is willing to give freedom for temporary security, they deserve neither.
No, Myspace shouldn't be shut down. It's like saying the internet should be shut down (which will never happen). I agree with most of the posters here that it's the parents responsibility to see what their kids are doing online, but I also agree that myspace should tighten up their security measures too. Mainly though, it's the parents job to protect their kid using myspace or any other online interactive site ie. chat rooms and such and to teach them the dangers of talking unknown people they come across online (just like you don't get into a car with a stranger), and as for the older users it's just common sense that you don't give out personal info, photos, or anything that could lead to trouble, and to never ever meet someone they just started talking to. It's the users who make the wrong decisions that make places like myspace dangerous, not the site itself. The sole intent on Myspace is to connect friends, let artists share their music, and just to have harmless fun, but there are some idiots who like to take advantage of it, and they are the ones who give sites like this a bad rep.
What company do you know of that has voluntarily shut itself down because it got a bad rep? That's the dumbest thing I've heard in a long while. I don't see any of the smoking industry saying "oh no, we've got a bad rep so let's shut down our business!" I'm not defending Myspace here, but I am saying that whoever wrote this article doesn't have a clue (not to mention that he/she needs to work on grammer a bit).
get real.. myspace is great!
Yea...I agree with Brandon here. Whoever wrote this article needs to stop talking about the business world if they don't know anything about it. Never have I heard of a business closing down because of a bad reputation. Coca-Cola changed its formula a while back...bad reputation. Did they shut down? NO! They adapted and changed the formula back.
Businesses DO NOT shut down because of a bad reputation. If they actually have a bad reputation, which i don't believe myspace does just because of it's shear popularity, they adapt and change to meet their customers expectations and try to redeem themselves. If they fail to do that, they loose business. THAT is why they shut down. LACK OF FUNDS!!!! NOT REPUTATION!!
So please educate yourself before you write another article...and yeah, work on your grammar.
I think that people who come up with these stupid posts should jump off a cliff. If you cant be responsible and have to be stupid you deserve to get raped. Seriously, If you have no common sense then the world doesnt need you. I think myspace just gets rid of the worlds idiots and I dont mind.
myspace shouldn't be shut down because of stupid kids. dont add people u dont know. how hard is that? i use myspace 2 talk 2 old friends that i havent seen in a long time. ive also found alot of old friends through myspace. it's those dumb kids that meet people online n meet up with them. but the same things can happen on instant messenger. people can get your screen names. you start talking to them n boom same as myspace so it shouldn't be blamed on myspace. it's the stupid decisions people make
you need a life... myspace is for friends, predators are everywhere... if they wern't online they'd be at the malls proof read/learn english.
While I would never advocate shutting something like myspace down without a real probable cause, I find a couple things about it disturbing.
One, that people are so into it that they spend more time constructing false identities or only interacting with each other through computers. And two, the personas that very young people come up with these days, though it is probably not the fault of myspace alone I feel slightly sick knowing that there are 13 year old girls/guys out there advertising themselves (even if only to their peers) as objects in what in the end amounts to both a dating service and a marketing pool.
I agree-I don't think myspace should shut itself down, neccessarily, but I find it sad that sooo many people spend so many hours a day making a webpage and trying to get "friends" and using myspace as a means to have some sort of social life. I have it simply because I was curious, I never use it I have like 3 friends, but every day I get emails from random people asking to be my friend and I'm like...do you have no ability to go out and actually interact with people in person?
I think computers are useful, clearly, but I think shit like myspace makes the world more impersonable. I see no need for 13 and 14 year olds to be on it. Put your kids on a damn soccer team if they really need friends. Honestly, it's like letting your kid put up pictures of themselves in a jail. You have no idea who's looking at your stuff, and it's not just kids. I'm 20, and the skeezy emails I get from one picture I have online, that's a headshot, is disturbing. I don't see the big cool deal about myspace...I actually think it's kind of lame. "I get to keep in touch with friends". How about phone? Email? Actually hanging out with the person? Writing letters? Generally, when people say "I get to find old friends" it implies, to me, I get to stalk people I went to high school with's pictures and profiles without them knowing I am curious about what they are doing with their lives. If they are your friends, something tells me you don't need their webpage in order to keep up with their lives, and if you are looking for old HS buddies, try classmates.com. It's a little less....stalkerish.
Go ahead, rip me apart for slandering your prescious myspace. I don't care, i don't use it. If you enjoy it, great, but instead of sitting on your computer working on a webpage to promote yourself in cyberspace to people who you don't even know, why not go to a bar, have a beer and make a real friend. One who actually knows who you are.
I swear all this stuff about myspace being unsafe for teens is alot of bull shit .Talking about how teen girls go out and meet guys from myspace , and then get raped so they blame myspace . Hello! it isn't myspaces fault , its the stupid girl who actually decided to trust a guy off of the computer!! they basically ask for it , Im not saying they deserve it , because they dont but there the stupid ones that decided to go meet the guy . Why does anyone even care everyday hollywood tells us it's cool to dress like a slut , have sex , do drugs ect . why does anyone even care . If they shut myspace down teens will just find differant sites! . I dont know what you guys use myspace for but I use to stay in touch with my family in friends who live to far away to vist . People are stupid and need to realize that it's there fault they dont keep track of what there kids are doing before it's to late so they need to freakin wake up and realize that it's there fault , not myspaces
One of my first posts had to do with this.
Myspace is not the problem.
People are the problem.
If parents were paying attention to what their kids were doing there wouldn't be twelve year old dressed like sluts meeting 40 year old men online.
i have a myspace. mine is set private. and if you want to be my friend you need my last name or my email address.
PICKY PICKY. but if everyone worried about predators and other malicious people going after you, there are things you can do to prevent unwanted requests.
I think people need to take responsibility for their actions.
-Peace.Love.Hope.Faith.
i just posted a blog about myspace. please read. =)
it may change your life.
or just make you laugh.
YOU FAGGOTS SIT THERE AND DEBATE WETHER OR NOT TO SHUT IT DOWN, I SAY HELL YES SHUT IT DOWN, NOT BECAUSE OF CHILDEN BEING RAPPED OR MEETING GUYS THATS THERE OWN FAULTS, BUT BECAUSE I THINK ITS IS SO SAD THAT YOU PEOPLE SIT ON YOUR COMPUTER HOURS AND HOURS A DAY LOOKING AT THAT STUPID PAGE JUST INCASE SOMETHING CHANGES! IF YOU WANT TO SIT AND START AT SOMETHING THAT WONT CHANGE TURN THE F**KIN COMPUTER OFF AND STARE AT THE BLANK SCREEN! MAYBE YOU LOSERS COULD SPELL YOUR OWN NAME IF YOU DID SOMETHING BESIDES WRITE GAY MESSAGES BACK AND FORTH AND PUT YOUR STUPID FANCY GLITTER LETTERS WITH YOU BFF'S NAME ON IT. GET OFF THE DAMN LAPTOP AND GET A BOOK AND READ IT MAYBE YOUR LEARN HOW TO DO SOMETHING BESIDES "ADD TO FRIENDS" OR "BLOCK BUDDY" ALL YOU FAGS WRITING ALL DONT SHUT IT DOWN IT ROCKS ETC YOU CAN ALL GO STRAIGHT TO HELL!
Apparently sitting in front of a computer and writing meaningless, rude responses to people on blogsites hasn't done much for you, either.
You can't spell (wether instead of whether, rapped instead of raped, start instead of stare, the list goes on) and you can't use proper grammar (lots of missing apostrophes everywhere).
Not to mention lack for any sort of respect for differing opinions.
Way to make yourself look so much better than everyone. You really succeeded.
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If You Swear That There's No Truth And Who Cares, How Come You Say It Like You're Right? [Bright Eyes]
http://progressiveu.org/143541-how-to-survive-the-2008-elections
Wow.
Just wow.
I now remember why I am not on myspace.
wow.. at first it made it sound lik u are anti-myspace..
kind of confusing..
but im addicted to myspace because i can keep up with people i dont get to see very often..
and dont blame myspace blame the predators or people that know better but just dont do better..
thatgirl2089