The Connecticut State legislature is working on a bill that would require social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook to verify users’ ages and get parental permission before minors could post profiles, according to an article titled “Internet Safety Is Goal of Bill” in the Hartford Courant on March 9, 2007.
Connecticut State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who chairs a 45-member national task force of attorneys general studing the issue of Internet safety, said:
“Connecticut now has the opportunity to be out at the forefront of a proactive movement to protect our children from the perils of a social networking site.”
The law would require the social networking sites to cross-check personal information — such as name, birth date, and address — to see if it matches existing public records, according to Blumenthal. Parental permission might involve downloading a form, filling it out and mailing it to the site.
Our View
With respect to MySpace.com, anyone who has ever attempted to contact their customer service with a unique question knows that the personnel infrastructure to handle individual queries simply doesn’t exist. To implement the requirements of the law, MySpace would need to hire many more employees to handle the burden of verification.
It is questionable whether the MySpace business model could support the added expenses that the law would require. Of course, that’s no reason to let them off the hook. As we stated in our book, it’s quite clear that MySpace disregarded safety during its early years, when all that mattered was gaining more users and becoming the largest social network site.
Since the buy out by News Corp., many safety measures have been implemented, including allowing any MySpace member to have a private profile. In addition, surveys have shown that teens themselves have become more savvy about online safety. And, parents are indeed more aware of what is happening and what’s possible with respect to their teens being online.
So, the question is: can a law really have a positive effect? Given that college students can start a social networking site during Spring Break, can legislation that focuses on the big players really have a meaningful effect?
An Advantage of the Legislation
One advantage of the legislation is that it would make it difficult for predators to pretend to be teens. This was the starting point for many of the situations where teens were lured into meetings with older men, who they thought were teen boys. If you’re going to claim to be a teen minor, you’ll have to get your parents’ permission to create your profile. A much older would-be predator will find this a difficult obstacle to overcome.
In Connecticut alone, six alleged assaults involving older men and younger girls who met through MySpace were investigated last year.
Blumenthal says that age monitoring is achievable through the use of software that is readily available and increasingly affordable. The software is currently used by alcohol and tobacco companies, as well as credit card companies.
MySpace’s View
MySpace Security Officer Hemanshu Nigam said that MySpace is committed to protecting teens online but does not believe the proposed Connecticut law is the best way to do it:
“The most cost-effective means to protect teens online is through a combined approach involving features and tools to make our site safer, educating our users and their parents, and working collaboratively with online safety organizations and companies. We have and will continue to focus considerable resources on developing effective ways to make our site safer. Attorney General Blumenthal’s proposal, while well intentioned, is not the answer.”
Blumenthal counters with the excellent point that the state is simply asking the networking sites to enforce the terms of service they have now. If you read the MySpace terms of service, you will find that it is illegal to enter an incorrect birth date when you sign up. When we were writing our book, we found the fact that you can edit your birth date when it’s illegal to have an incorrect birth date quite telling: the terms of service imply that security is a key interest of the site, but the practical implementation of the site implies that no one at MySpace cares what age you want to claim you are. Which is a big part of the problem.
Can Legislation Solve the Problem?
The Connecticut legislation challenges social networking sites to live up to what they promise in their stated terms of service. What happens if the sites refuse? Can Connecticut ban MySpace? Even China and Iran have difficulty banning Web access.
As we argued in our book — you cannot protect teens who don’t want to be protected from risk. Those who do care have likely become much more aware of the risks that exist on the Internet, through books like ours, newspaper articles, news on television, etc.
We ended “MySpace Safety: 51 Tips” with the following statement:
Some day, we hope, a book like this won’t be necessary. Then sites like MySpace won’t be in the headlines anymore. Society will have adjusted to Internet communication and virtual interaction as a part of everyday life, and a working set of safe practices will be understood by all, and appear as obvious as “Don’t step in front of an onrushing bus.”
We’re not all the way there yet — but in the past year, since we wrote our book, a lot of progress has been made. Teens and parents understand a lot more about the risks of social networking sites. Online safety gets attention in schools and elsewhere. That teens are online is no longer a big secret.
The Connecticut law has a good intent — if a site says it’s illegal to enter an incorrect age, they should enforce that. They don’t. Hence, the “you must enter your true age” statements of sites like MySpace are meaningless.
But we don’t see the law increasing safety significantly. The Internet is a wide open place. Teens who don’t want to have to involve their parents in verifying their age will simply go to other sites, they’ll go into an even deeper hiding from both their parents and the State. In our view, a law isn’t going to help protect that particular group of high-risk teens; yet they are surely the ones for whom the freedom afforded by the Internet poses the greatest danger today.