MySpaceSafetyTips.com

We first heard of MySpace.com in September, 2004, when our 16 year old daughter discovered it. It was one of several sites she had found that provided an online venue for new songwriters and performers. We made some recordings of her original songs and uploaded them onto the site.

Our daughter continued to manage her account, making contacts with musicians and fans, and we didn’t pay much attention to MySpace.com for the next year or so. Then we started seeing occasional news articles about the MySpace phenomenon. MySpace had become the leading site for “social networking” and was growing rapidly in popularity among teens. It was the latest teen craze, an online addition to the instant messaging that was already a part of daily life for most U.S. teens.

We began a more extensive exploration of MySpace. Our first session of friend-hopping to the pages created by our daughter’s MySpace friends, many of whom we knew personally, was very surprising. After further investigation, we began to see MySpace as something that could also be very positive. It provided a way for people from anywhere in the world who share common interests to meet and share information.

Still, it was clear that many teens were using MySpace in a reckless manner. It was also clear that the emerging anti-MySpace attitude which advocates its prohibition is not the answer to the problem.

In this book, we hope we have offered a common sense approach to MySpace.com for both teens and parents.

Dale and Kevin Farnham
May 14, 2006

[Excerpted from the book MySpace Safety: 51 Tips for Teens and Parents. If you'd like to read more of the book, please visit the publisher's site, HowToPrimers.com. If you'd like to support the authors' efforts in creating and providing these materials, please consider purchasing the print edition ($14.95) or the digital edition ($7.95) of the book at Amazon.com. The book is also available at Barnes&Noble and in the UK at Amazon.co.uk. We thank you for your support.]