Don’t Blame MySpace
Don’t blame myspace for poor parenting:
This may just be the best commentary regarding MySpace I’ve seen yet…
After 15 years or so of trying to transform the child you gave birth to into a thinking, functioning adult, it comes down to this: Either you raised the kind of kid who�s going to sell weed, talk about killing his classmates and offer sex to grownups on myspace.com, or you did not.
If you�re one of the many who didn�t, good for you. You can relax and let your kid enjoy the portal to hell that is the Internet without worrying that he�ll be corrupted by the depravity beckoning from the other side of the monitor.
But if you�re one of the many who decided to overprotect or under-encourage your kids, or tell yourself that parenting consists of prayer and Prozac, you may not then blame myspace for the mess you�ve created.
Myspace started as a site for unknown bands to promote their music and concerts while getting their name out to potential fans, but has now morphed into an online community dominated by and geared toward two groups of people: teenagers and creepy adults who like to talk to teenagers using teenage slang.
Most kids use it to do what every other kid has ever done, at least while I�ve been alive: Trade music and gossip, posture and make themselves out to be more than they are while trying to lure members of the opposite sex.
And just like every other generation of normal kids with normal upbringings, there are a few on the fringes whose behavior would make any parent proud � as long as that parent is Charlie Sheen.
Selling dope, seeking or offering sex, planning to blow up their school � you name it, and a handful of kids have done it on myspace.
And since myspace gives the degenerates the same access to their forum as they do the normal kids, the site�s operators have been vilified constantly over the last few weeks by the media, parent groups and grandstanding politicians.
Myspace must be regulated!
Myspace is hurting the kids!
Congress is going to take a close look at myspace!
Yeah, that�s the answer.
Congress. The guys who can�t figure out if immigrant laborers should stay, go, or just hang around long enough to pick celery for $1.50 a day.
It used to be the fault of Judas Priest every time a kid put a rope around his neck. When I was a kid it was Metallica and action movies. Now it�s �Grand Theft Auto� and myspace.com.
The one common denominator is the American tradition of blaming the thing the kid happened to be doing at the exact moment he messed up instead of tracing the path of the mess-up back to its root: The two irresponsible idiots who wanted a child but instead created the poorly raised result of a poorly planned pregnancy.
Instead of regulating Web sites, someone should tell them what they forgot to tell their kids: The world is not here to clean up your mess.
I couldn’t agree more.
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POSTED IN: Safety
12 opinions for Don’t Blame MySpace
Tami
Jun 2, 2006 at 1:10 am
I couldn’t have said it better myself!!!
Kearstin
Jun 2, 2006 at 1:23 am
I completely agree with you! *Finally* someone bold enough to say what’s been on everyone else’s minds! Thank you!
Niexx
Jun 2, 2006 at 1:25 am
Yes!
I think everyone should shutup and stop blaming myspace.
Now I’m not a myspace”whore”
I use it just to stay intouch with friends in other states that I never get to see.
If myspace wasn’t there everyone would just go find another site similar to it.
Even without the internet they could do it on phone chatlines or on the streets.
And putting an age limit on it won’t help anything.
I know of plenty of people that have their account setup as 18+ and they’re not.
Maybe Tom should start sueing for all of this BS the media spits out and use it to fix
his slow as site ;-)
Mom to 2
Jun 2, 2006 at 11:44 am
Amen to your comments.
I am a mother of a 15 and 12 year old.
Yes they both have myspaces but I am a sneaky mom and I have a myspace too.
I access their myspaces to see what they are up to.
If my kids have problems I sure as hell am not going to blame myspace.
I will take a look at myself and see hey where did I screw up or how can we fix this.
I am not going to blame myspace, the internet or any of that crap.
Parents need to start looking at themselves and spend time with their kids.
Not let the kids spend all this time on the computer and then they have no clue what their kids are doing on it.
Did I make any sense???
Trench
Jun 2, 2006 at 11:53 am
Perfect sense. :)
Al
Jun 2, 2006 at 1:15 pm
Same for me.I couldn’t agree more either.Know what, I am just about being 24 and I am shocked.I’m young, though I’m not that kinfd of youth and I regret the good ol’times where it was like you said:”Myspace started as a site for unknown bands to promote their music and concerts while getting their name out to potential fans, but has now morphed into an online community dominated by and geared toward two groups of people: teenagers and creepy adults who like to talk to teenagers using teenage slang.”
Just take a look at my most recent stats.Use the MS search engine and search by display name.there are ten profiles per page.If you search “cunt”, you will find 623 profiles, for “whore” 618 profiles, for “bitch” 4471 profiles(axesome), and last but not least for “slut” 833 profiles.JUst called slut.Not incorporating slut in a longer display name…Isn’t that obvios enough that to ask REGULATION??????Plus now there are MyCrib, TagWorld and in France SkyBlog which are based on the same horrific ethic values.Being a “slut” makes you be admired…I’m SO disgusted…What can I say more?Al
BW
Jun 2, 2006 at 1:32 pm
This is one topic that drives me absolutely nutty. No one seems to have the ability to step back from themselves and see that we do the same exact blame game every generation. This is one of my favorites, from http://www.fepproject.org/commentaries/levinson.html :
“An early moral panic came in reaction to comic books. As Amy Kiste Nyberg notes in Seal of Approval, comic books were “a new medium altogether … that relied on the interaction of words and pictures to tell stories in a unique way …”3 They challenged authority by removing kids’ entertainment from adult control, and adults reacted predictably. In the 1930s and early 40s, critics complained that comic books would spoil kids for better literature; plus, the small print would ruin their eyes. The Catholic Church and education groups pressed newsstands not to sell comics, and some communities even staged public burnings. Then, in 1948, a child psychiatrist named Fredric Wertham was quoted in Colliers magazine as saying that comic books had a harmful effect on children’s psyches, and the charge shifted from comics as bad lit. to comics as a cause of juvenile delinquency.”
Yes, comic books.
Every generation has the same reaction - “Oh, those things from years ago were harmless. THIS [new thing] is actually dangerous though.”
So funny.
Al
Jun 2, 2006 at 3:30 pm
Oh well I am not blaming MySpace at all,I helped me in a huge way beginning having exposure with my music band which doesn’t exist anymore now(thanks to MS too,but WTF) I know it’s always the same ol’ thing in a cyclic way…Hence I speak ironicly about the “good old times”…Bah.I agree with you BW.But I’m too young to step back in my own life.(I can track back my parents youth etc).Maybe in my 16-18 years old was I an ugly brat, but I didn’t need any web to be it.I had also fake friends without the web.I wiped that out without the web.Web is NOT hell.Use it properly.It helps.Did I made sense too?
Al
Jun 3, 2006 at 8:16 am
Well everybody, I gave a try on Ms again, using an unknown IP to them, and opening a “massive MySpace destruction page” with open ideas of cleaning this website from all threats of all kinds…It was automatically deleted.I did that on purpose to test their Terms of service.I assume they are used only when applying but when further modifications occur in the profiles the staff isn’t enough to browse the kazillion pages and shut’em down.BTW Tom doesn’t exist, he’s a puppet.MySpace was sold to an “international entertainment company”…That is a rumor you can read in many places.Ok, I know I’m not welcome here.But take it.I don’t want MySpace to be shut down.I want it to be a safe and quiet place to network professionnally(for me)as it was. Al
Liz
Jun 10, 2006 at 10:56 pm
What about when your kids are at school? Or at a friend’s house? Or the public library? Are you following them around EVERYWHERE they go? Probably not, they could be the “sneaky” ones and have “decoy” myspace accounts to keep you thinking they’re little angels! I’m not blaming myspace, I’m not blaming the internet, and I’m not blaming parents, for the most part, either. It’s the child’s fault… And all the sick pedophiles that are out there! If the kid is old enough to type, then they’re old enough to know the difference between right and wrong. As are the adults who pray on children. I don’t think it’s right to try to place all of the blame on the parents. What about the parents who are working for a living, and have to pick up extra shifts, because the economy is going to hell? Is it there fault that they’re trying to feed their children, and don’t know that their kids go to the library and use the internet to try to hook up with people? I don’t think so… All a parent can do is raise a child with good morals, and hope they don’t become an internet whore. A lot of kids are also influenced by peers to have a raunchy myspace, to make them look cool.
loanchic_3
Sep 11, 2006 at 1:06 pm
Liz,
Liz,
I agree with what you have said. I know of very many loving and caring parents that have tried to be positive and support their children to the best of their ability. I have one of those kids. We have taken him to drug and alcohol education classes and independent counselors. There comes a point in time when you realize that you are no longer the guiding force in your Childs life and that they have chosen their own path. There does seem to be a lot of talk of drugs, drinking and sex on those my space sites. Some kids are going to take the path that they are going to take regardless of how hard you have tried to teach them morals, ethics and values, regardless of how many time you verify what they are doing or saying. The old saying here goes trust but verify. Have you ever heard of the mob mentality? This is what happens to some kids. They get caught up in this mob mentality and it matters very little what you say and or do, they are going to choose their own path. I am sick of people that seem to think that they have all of the answers and that they are qualified to lay blame on any ones door step when they are speaking of the masses in general and do not know the specifics. It is easy to label and lay blame when you have not walked a mile in someone else’s shoes. Either the author of that particular comment has no children or they managed to find a system that worked for their child or children. What works for one does not always work for another and it is very uneducated of the previous author to make such statements with out knowing the facts? Here is one for you, if our government has known and knows where Bin Laden is, why did we not just go after him and hold him accountable? Why are we spending millions and millions of dollars fighting a war in a country where Bin Laden does not reside in? This seems like a very round about way to go just to have a culprit that we can hold liable for the acts of 9/11. Why did we not just go after Bin Laden? Here is the answer. We need to hold someone accountable and the government needed to look as if they were taking action. There was nothing that we could do to get Bin Laden because he resides in a country of thieves. Liars, murders and thugs but the U.S. has an agreement with the government of this country that binds us so the mentality was that it is better to have some one to hold accountable than to be empty handed. The start of this entire commentary was about the government and parents rights to monitor what their children are doing on line to keep them safe because unfortunately, most children are naive about the dangers that are out there. You can warn and warn and give them examples but the truth of the matter is that they think that they are invincible and smarter than you give them credit for so it is okay to play with fire because they will never get burned. Rather than pointing a finger and finding fault with others parenting skill some people should stick to the topic or not waste their time polluting us with their need to lay blame and find fault as I am sure that their world is lined with gold and they also can play with fire and not get burned.
Single and lovin it
Nov 8, 2006 at 6:26 pm
well ur the only parent i know who argrees with us!
thanks