As most early adapters will testify,
MySpace.com was a lot cooler before the 60 million jailbait teenagers signed up.
I joined during the Great Friendster Blackout of 2003, long before the social networking site sold out to Rupert Murdoch. Back in those halcyon days, it was all hardcore kids, professional slackers and college students with rad hair. Now, thanks to music publicists and glittery GIFs, most profiles have soundtracks and corporate sponsors.
Lost indie cred aside, most everyone I know is on MySpace, and not a week goes by when I don't run across (snoop on) people I know (ex-boyfriends) on the Web site.
But these kids are getting to be a real problem. MySpace's administrators restrict the access to profiles of 14- and 15-year-olds and don't allow pre-teens to join at all, but how easy is it to lie about your age when signing up? As easy as typing 1984 instead of 1994.
Parents and police are trying to get MySpace -- second in daily page views only to Yahoo -- to figure out how to verify members' ages. Time magazine recently reported about a meetup gone confusingly sour: A 19-year-old posing as a high school senior got arrested for having sex with a 14-year-old who had claimed to be a year older on the site and who is now suing MySpace for $30 million. Now, I've had some bad first dates before, but that really sucks.
Local police are wise to it. Kids barely out of childhood are posting their full names, birth dates, hometowns and phone numbers online, getting themselves into risky situations they can't understand.
A twenty-something dude from Shadyside and his buddy were busted for allegedly trying to hook up with 13-year-olds they met on the Internet last month. Another Latrobe guy was arrested last week after he was accused of offering to "train" an agent posing as a 13-year-old.
And remember those dweebs in Wilkinsburg who are accused of making a MySpace profile for a classmate saying he was gay?
But the MySpace phenomenon needs to be put into perspective. Kids have always kept secrets from their parents. There have always been bullies and the bullied. There's always been a creepy dude hanging out by the playground. I feel like a fuddy duddy saying this, but why can't kids these days just be kids -- like we were back in the '90s?
They need to go outside and play in the mud. Leave the Internet to the grown-ups, and leave MySpace to the hipsters.
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