Books |
MySpace Unraveled
Larry Magid & Anne Collier
By
Published: Jan 01, 2006
Category:
Self Help
MySpace Unraveled: What it is and how to use it safely
Larry Magid & Anne Collier
MySpace — the king of “social networking” sites — gained its 100 millionth member this month (August, 2006). That’s huge. No, it’s crazy big. Like a monster, eating everything in its path.
It hasn’t been so long since Rupert Murdoch paid $585 million to buy MySpace. That seemed — to me, anway — like an idiotic purchase, and for a very obvious reason: More than 20% of MySpace’s members are under 18. Teenagers. As we know, kids are notoriously disloyal to brands and can always be expected to move on to the next cool thing before the year is out. If history is any judge, MySpace should be a ghost town by Spring 2007.
And yet Google just agreed to pay News Corp’s Fox Interactive Media — that is, Rupert Murdoch — at least $900 million over the next 45 months for the right to sell ads on MySpace and some other Fox sites. Which puts Murdoch $315 million ahead already. Clearly, some very smart people think that MySpace is here to stay. Go figger.
Larry Magid is probably the most experienced and respected writer on Internet safety for kids. Anne Collier is editor of NetFamilyNews.org. Together, they have produced a 177-page guide for parents who are correctly curious about what their kids are doing on the computer and worried by the horror stories they have read about social networking sites: a 14-year-old girl strangled, reportedly by someone she met on MySpace; a 13-year-old girl stopped by her grandfather on her way to a train station to meet a 38-year-old man she met through My-Space; a 15-year-old charged with harassment when police found what read like a "hit list" on her MySpace page.
Magic & Collier cogently explain how MySpace is different from other networking sites — it allows members to combine blogging with socializing. “MySpace is the new burger joint,” they write.
If that were the case, there would be no need for this book. But MySpace is no ordinary burger joint. By its very name, it suggests that the members own it; it’s a club. And because there are technological barriers that parents often can’t jump, it can be a private club. Right there, you see the potential for trouble.
Sociologists have reported that kids are scheduled as never before. And it’s true — from pre-school on, a lot of kids are like little executives, running from one activity to another until they rush home, do their schoolwork and collapse. Kids need time to hang out. Sites like MySpace provide it.
If hanging out with friends were the sole — or even main — function of MySpace, I’d cheer. But there is also the matter of accumulating friends, of piling up the numbers. How do you do that? By becoming a “friend” of a rock band. The more cool bands you orbit, the more “friends” you have.
This is a time-consuming activity. At the suggestion of the editor of Seventeen Magazine, I joined MySpace. The idea was that I’d share some cultural opinions, which would then attract new visitors to HeadButler.com. But for weeks, I had only one “friend” — the founder of MySpace, who is everybody’s “friend”.
Then someone explained MySpace to me. You gotta work it. Two, three, four hours a day. (The “average” MySpace member spends between one and two hours on the site a day.) Hey, who ever said “friendship” is easy? Like marriage, it takes commitment and effort. Just keep loving those unknown bands…
Of course there is an easier way to be popular: flaunt your sexuality. Pictures preferred, especially of teen girls. Accounts of debauchery will also work. MySpace says it patrols its screens, but really — how do you patrol 100 million profiles? Well, someone does: pedophiles and weirdos. And college admissions officers, who visit MySpace to compare the Goody Two Shoes of the application essay to the drunk girl who portrays herself as a ‘ho.
If you want your kid to go to a decent college, you really want to know what he/she says about him/herself on MySpace. And, no matter what your kid’s future, you want to make sure you do what Magid & Collier suggest: The kid can only use the computer in a public room, you have the right to see his/her profile. In short, you’ve got to be a parent, not a baffled online newbie.
Of all the things that can make you crazy about MySpace, sexual predators come pretty low on the list. For one thing, most kids are pretty savvy about creeps. For another, most kids who have sex with adults do it because they want to — rape is fairly uncommon.
Magid & Collier set the record straight about sex. But there’s something they don’t deal with, and I wish they had — the fundamentally fraudulent phenomenon of “social networking.” These sites are not services; they are businesses. Helping kids grow, communicate, expand their worlds — that sounds nice, but it’s BS. As a critic has written, “We keep touting MySpace as ‘Do It Yourself’ media for the masses when it’s basically just an ad revenue generator built on the backs of its membership.”
Think not? Already movies and movie stars and music stars can be your “friends” on MySpace. They’ll be happy to take your money. Will they bring you chicken soup if you’re sick? Of course not.
So the exploitation of kids on MySpace is, mostly, exploitation by MySpace. Back in the day — warning: here comes the Old Fart Rant — kids had real experiences and made real mistakes, played real games and got real injuries. MySpace takes kids who need fresh air and real friends and addicts them to their computer screens. Pump them up with snacks and soft drinks, and they’re just like their parents — only “interactive.” Whatever that means.
A hundred million people can’t be wrong? Nonsense. A hundred million people are almost always wrong. Or to put it less kindly, most of that hundred million are so unaware of the real transaction that they can’t wait to be exploited. There’s a word for people like that — losers.
Disagree? Let me know.
To buy “MySpace Unraveled” from Amazon.com, click here.
