Ultimately, parents must police kids' MySpace use

Here’s something that may come as a surprise to some parents: MySpace.com claims it shuts down 30,000 underage users a week.

‘‘We didn’t design this site for under 14-year-olds, we don’t want them, and we are doing what we can to keep them off,’’ says Hemanshu Nigam, the company’s chief security officer.

That may be as close as a corporate spokesman ever gets to saying: Parents, beware.

A statement on MySpace tells prospective members they must be 14 to join. The site announced increased safety precautions last month in a partnership with Seventeen magazine, the National School Board Association, and the National Association of Independent Schools. None of this is enough to keep 8-, 9- and 10-year-olds away. They want to be on MySpace, and they lie about their age to get there. Which is why Nigam’s team works 24/7 to police the site.

But as proud as Nigam is about the new safety features, he says parents need to talk to their children about websites like his that let members post personal information and photos.

‘‘One of the most important things any parent can do is talk about it,’’ he says. ‘‘Communicate. Talk to your kids just like you would about something that worries you in the physical world.’’

Child psychologist Richard Freed’s daughter Madeline is only 3, but he’s already imagining a conversation in six years or so when she and her friends start to clamor for MySpace. He suspects he’s being optimistic. Even with a no-TV, no-computer-access rule in his house, he knows she may discover MySpace long before fourth or fifth grade.

MySpace allows users to create a profile and share it with others. It had more than 35 billion page views in September, making it the Internet’s most popular social networking site, according to comScore Media Metrix, which tracks online activity. One of the new safety features on MySpace makes it difficult for anyone over 18 to contact someone under 16 unless they already know each other — the older member has to know the full name and e-mail address of the younger person. Other safety features screen ads for age-appropriate content and enable parents to shut down their child’s account.

Most parents find the world of social networking frightening and dangerous, says Caroline MacNichol, middle school director at Dana Hall in Wellesley, an independent girls’ school for grades 6 to 12. ‘‘They worry about pornography, pedophilia, sleazy marketing, and, now, cyberbulling,’’ where MySpace users post nasty messages about classmates, says MacNichol. All are valid concerns, she adds. ‘‘But it’s ridiculous to ban it. We have to learn to deal with it.’’

Psychologist Sharon Lamb, a professor at St. Michael’s College in Vermont, urges parents not to be too quick to dismiss MySpace altogether.

‘‘There is some wonderfully creative, imaginative writing that happens on MySpace. It can facilitate the kind of self-reflective writing that eighth-grade teachers have been trying to get kids to do for years,’’ says Lamb, co-author of ‘‘Packaging Girlhood, Rescuing Our Daughters From Marketers’ Schemes.’’

The trouble is that what used to happen at pajama parties — trying on stereotypical sexual identities, experimenting with bad language and mature concepts — happens now online. Lamb knows a 16-year-old girl who wrote in her profile that she likes to have sex, and used a coarse term for it. ‘‘She may know she doesn’t mean it and so may her best friends, but friends of friends don’t know it,’’ she says.

Just as previous generations collected rocks or stamps, today’s teens collect friends on MySpace. (It’s called ‘‘friending.’’) Bragging rights often go to the person in a group who has the most. Usually they don’t know the friends of friends, let alone friends of friends of friends, says Lamb, and they think what they say is private, so they tend to say and show too much, including revealing photos.

Nigam says MySpace is employing new technology to improve enforcement of its ban on nudity. ‘‘We can identify and shut down anyone who posts nudity or links to a pornographic site,’’ he says. ‘‘We try to do this within the hour of the posting.’’ A violation of any MySpace rule, including lying about your age, exacts a warning or a shutdown, and sometimes notification to law enforcement.

Teens aren’t always aware that they may be communicating with people who are much older, says Linda McCarthy, author of ‘‘Own Your Space.’’ She is an Internet security architect with Symantec, which produces security software. When her son was 13, he created a MySpace profile saying he was 19. She considers herself lucky: He told her.

‘‘That only happens if there’s dialogue,’’ says Anne Collier, codirector of blogsafety.com.

Which is why Freed, whose San Francisco-area practice specializes in media use and adolescents, is thinking ahead. ‘‘The first time we talk about it, I’ll tell [Madeline] the Internet is a place where you can learn neat things, but there are some places you don’t go, and MySpace is one of them. It’s not good for you because there are things there that would be really upsetting to you.’’

What about the subsequent conversation, when she tells him all her friends are on it, that it’s not a big deal?

‘‘I hope between now and then I’ll do a good enough job of educating her to the effects of the media and she’ll respect my wishes,’’ Freed says. And when she does turn 14? ‘‘I’m hoping things will have changed enough that it will be safe enough. But maybe that’s the optimist in me speaking.’’

Still, it’s not very different from what Nigam tells his 11-year-old. ‘‘I’ve told him, ‘Right now, MySpace is not right for you.’ I trust that if his friends have it, he’ll tell me. I’ll talk to their parents myself.’’

Barbara 'Meltz can be reached at meltz@globe.com.