Hello Cheri, Thanks again for joining in. Another thought that has crossed my mind is why are these kids not learning their social skills in public first. Learning to mingle and get out of hiding so that they CAN learn 'how' people really interact and how to really judge who to interact with. A school is such a small populus to learn from and is more of a trend in one direction than to say is varied culturally. If you look at different schools, each will show different values, beliefs, clothing styles, etc. But the biggest values these kids need to learn is body language and how to be aware of their surroundings. That must take place publicly. Can't do it on the internet. The internet has become a mask for many to hide behind. Many children still play make believe and learned they can do it on the internet. They can become whatever they want. And if there friends see them on here they want to look 'cool'. So, stretch the truth a little ... it's ok. No one will get hurt and we will get a kick out of it. Grown ups do this too, sad to say. Just some more rambling thoughts here. __________ Kenneth R Sword Jr Co-CEO - Bizzy Blogz http://www.bizzyblogz.com Sponsor of the ABA Basketball 'Streetball' group "Nothing But Net Entertainment" http://www.bizzyblogz.com/NBNE/ New! Bizzy Blogz Community - like MySpace http://www.bizzyblogz.biz An Advertising Traffic Machine http://www.megatraffic.us/ http://www.frappr.com/bizzyblogzcommunity

Ken, I don't have any personal experience of MySpace, and it didn't exist when my children were teens. I can only form an opinion on what I've read here and elsewhere, and what I've heard on radio and TV usually through news stories or talk shows. Based on what Sandra said here, maybe the adults ought to be asked to leave there, instead of the kids. Kids still need to be supervised, of course. And policies still need to be in place to verify that the age limits are being honored. AND, kids have been known to victimize other kids. Isn't this the place where the bulimia and anorexia cults have reportedly formed? The bottom line is, no matter what is done by MySpace or any other internet site to attempt to protect kids, ultimately they can only protect themselves by adhering to rules their presumably responsible parents lay down. That said, perhaps the internet should adopt some form of this part of the Hippocratic Oath: First, do no harm. The fact that the ultimate responsibility lies with the individual should not take away from the moral obligation of site owners to do what can reasonably be done to see that no harm comes to a child through their sites. Cheri

Hi Ken, MySpace is NOT a fault! They can not be expected to hire people who go out to over 7 million peoples homes and verify they did not lie when they registered for MySpace. Ian, Great website, thanks for posting it. In order to make a site "Clickable" on Adland, you need to put the http:// in front of it. http://www.virtualglobaltaskforce.com

Kenneth, The thing I wonder about is how does a computer know if the young person is lying or not? These preditors get into these chat rooms and work under pretense, getting a little information here, telling a little lie there, getting a telephone # and then go to a search engine and put the # in and if they have the right search engine, up pops an address. I believe that many of the kids start out doing this for the excitement,and not realizing the dangers. If we can't stop illigals from crossing the borders, then how can we expect to control what is going on in cyber space.

hi, i have a question. shouldn't the parent know what the child is doing? my space has to try to find ways to monitor at least enough to see trends of content and i don't know how to do that, but kids need to be guided and protected. nan