MySpace.com and other social Web sites that allow anyone to post photos and personal information about themselves for the entire world to see are increasingly becoming the focus of investigations related to the molestation, rape and murder of teenagers, and parents may be starting to catch on to the potential hazards of such sites.
A report by USA Today found that teens are regularly posting their cell phone number, school name and other information along with inappropriate pictures of themselves on sites such as MySpace, which has 55 million members. But most teenagers appear to be oblivious to the dangers of such broad disclosures.
“Kids are not connecting what they’re doing on the computer with real life,” Parry Aftab, an online safety expert who has advised MySpace, told USA Today. “They do not believe they’re accountable.”
Apparently criminals have tuned in to the opportunity for misbehavior such Web sites hold, as a brief look at recent crimes indicates a vast new market for finding targets has opened up in cyberspace.
In January, a 14-year-old girl was found strangled in a garbage bin in Newark, N.J., and media reports have linked MySpace with her death, USA Today said.
A 15-year-old was found dead in a canal near her home in Livermore, Calif., in January, and police discovered she was active on MySpace, USA Today said. And in Middletown, Conn., seven girls under 16 have been sexually assaulted by men they encountered on MySpace.
“A case that doesn’t have a connection to the Internet is rare,” Los Angeles detective Paul Bishop told USA Today.
While the Connecticut attorney general’s office is investigating MySpace “for possible criminal prosecution” for “failure to shield minors” from pornographic images and sexual predators making it “a parent’s worst nightmare,” MySpace released a statement regarding the issue, USA Today reported.
“We share [the attorney general’s] concerns about the safety and security of MySpace, and we will be working with him … to make our safety practices and procedures even stronger and more effective,” the statement said.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has noticed a change in the types of crimes reported to their agency, USA Today said.
“We’ve seen fewer cases of kids being enticed in chat rooms by someone using deceptive methods,” Michelle Collins, a spokeswoman for the center, told USA Today. “And we’ve seen more cases of children who are inadvertently exposing themselves and putting themselves at a higher risk from offenders or people who have bad intentions.”
In related news, in January, NBC’s “Dateline” aired a hidden-camera report addressing the problem of men who target teenagers online for sex.
The show was the highest-rated edition in more than a year, which may indicate parents are starting to realize they need to pay attention to the issue, USA Today said.
“I believe the Internet has actually fed the creation of pedophiles,” New York Times reporter Kurt Eichenwald, who has written on the issue, said.
“In the past these people might have the inclination, but acting on it was so difficult.”
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