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Article Excerpt
Millions of U.S. teens have embraced a new craze--"social networking" on Web sites, where they can sign up and read blogs and messages, see photos and videos, and have virtual conversations with others in real time. Minors at the school dance have chaperones, but who's watching them online?
"The new form of social interaction is over the Internet, exposing children to, literally, a world of potential danger," said Michelle Collins, a director at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), in testimony in July before a House subcommittee considering the Delete Online Predators Act (DOPA). "Child predators consider [social networking] sites to be an easyway to find child victims. They can use the information posted by children to forge a 'cyber-relationship' that can lead to that child being victimized."
Reports to the center's CyberTipline about online enticement of children have increased 400 percent since 1998, Collins said. According to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), one in five children has been approached sexually on the Internet.
Social networking sites--like Classmates.com; Friendster; Xanga; and the largest, MySpace, with more than 100 million users--allow people to sign up (usually for free) and create profiles with pictures, videos, and personal information to find others who share similar interests. People identified as "friends" can post comments and link their pages to other "friends." The sites maybe open to anyone or limited to specific groups (such as students in Great Britain or retirees); some maybe joined by invitation only. Some sites charge a membership fee to enter.
To "join" most sites, users simply supply a name, date of birth, and e-mail address. Though site user agreements may ban members under a certain age and ithreaten to oust those who use offensive language or post obscene images, site owners claim they can do little to rein in such uses.
Teens are flocking to these sites. A survey of 1,160 youths ages 13 to 17 released in May by cable TV and Internet provider Cox Communications found 61 percent of the teens had...
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