From the Director's Desk

April 14, 2006

Beverly J. Obert, Executive Director

MySpace and FaceBook are websites billed as social networks. Kids used to go to the local soda shop, bowling alley, and drive-in to hook up with friends. Now they chat online, and share personal identification and information from the comfort of their homes. Because this information is widely available on the Internet, they are vulnerable to sexual predators. What can librarians do to educate children, teens and their parents? Keep reading: the following information may give you a place to start.

Sunday evening, April 9, on Dateline NBC, there was an excellent program that included information about MySpace.com. If you are unfamiliar with this web site and others like it such as FaceBook, you should educate yourselves, teachers, and parents. MySpace is a website where one can put a personal profile, chat with friends, and write about their thoughts. The story Sunday evening was about three girls who thought they were being safe and communicated on MySpace with 19 year-old, Matt. Matt turned out to be a 30 something police detective. Note, these girls had parents that were involved but still put information on MySpace that made them vulnerable to predators.

Often people say library Internet stations are not safe places for kids, but I would contend that teens and pre-teens with computers in their own rooms are not safe, especially after viewing this program. I would urge libraries to be proactive in educating parents about web sites such as MySpace. Here is the link to the NBC Dateline web site. If the page changes before you get to read it, scroll down to the listing of topics on recent programs or put the date April 9, 2006 and the topic MySpace in the archive search boxes.

Do you want to learn how MySpace works? The Dateline page has a step-by–step guide to how this web site works. Many schools do not let students post to MySpace from the school. However, kids are very adept at getting around such sanctions. Public libraries need to be aware of this web site and others like it so that when kids ask about it they can answer, explaining about the dangers that they may be putting themselves in by using this website.