Digital kids

Youth centers grapple with MySpace

By Stefanie Olsen
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Published: June 23, 2006 4:00 AM PDT

In something out of a modern-day "West Side Story," two teenagers from rival schools used MySpace after school at the local Boys and Girls Club of America to "cyberbully" other kids.

So six months ago, the club, located in San Francisco's Mission District, decided to ban member access to the popular social network in the hope of thwarting threats of violence among teens on their personal MySpace pages.

"A lot of tension was being brought to our facility due to that," said Leticia Barajas, director of the Columbia Park club in San Francisco, which is one unit of about 4,000 independently operated clubs around the United States.

Several other BGCA around the San Francisco Bay Area have banned MySpace too in recent months.

All that banning is, surprisingly, OK with MySpace's top security executive. Hemanshu Nigam, who was hired in May to be chief security officer of News Corp.-owned MySpace. Nigam responded to the news by saying that the company endorses setting policies that let students explore the Web responsibly and safely.

"In our view, how that's done should be left up to each individual community and we make ourselves available to help them find that balance," he wrote in an e-mail.

That BGCA club joined other community centers, school districts, and most likely some parents, in the same decision to forbid kids from using MySpace, which has as many as 70 million members and as many as 14 million under the age of 18. The reasons cited are often echoed: because kids can use the site to bully or harass each other, waste time, or fall victim to predators with too much access to their personal information.

Even Congress has weighed in. Rep. Michael Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) has proposed the Deleting Online Predators Act, which would require schools receiving federal funds to ban social networks such as MySpace.

But at other BGCA clubs, MySpace has touched off a debate less black and white. Some technology directors say that the hazards of social networks are often possible with or without the Internet or networking sites. And if kids are determined to visit MySpace, they'll find a way, perhaps without adult supervision. According to one line of thought, by allowing access to the site, community tech directors have an opportunity to supervise kids and teach them the etiquette and skills necessary for their futures in a high-tech world.

"Here they have to be 14 to go on MySpace (which is the site's policy) and they're supervised at all times. Otherwise, they'll sneak and go somewhere to use it where they're not supervised," said Manny Oronsaye, the technical director at another BGCA in San Francisco, which has not banned the site.

Reena Burton, education and tech director at BGCA in a downtown San Francisco neighborhood known as the Tenderloin, reversed her decision to ban MySpace for the same reason.

"We banned it and then we realized that the kids were going to go on somewhere else, so we kind of decided to let the teens go on while they're here, and understand how to be safe on it," Burton said.

Whatever the case, MySpace has lodged itself in the American teen psyche much the way Pong or Donkey Kong did in earlier decades. That's why it has caused consternation among parents, educators and now community centers, which are aiming, in part, to teach kids about computers and the Internet that they might not otherwise have access to, but without putting them in harm's way.

Meanwhile, MySpace is trying to assuage worries and mitigate hazards to kids by installing stiffer security and privacy controls on its site. Earlier this week, the company said it would enact controls that restrict how teens older than 18 can communicate with members younger than 16, for example.

Brian Hill, a representative at the BGCA headquarters in Atlanta, said that the organization's mission is to provide a safe place for kids online and offline. But because each club is independently owned and operated, it does not have policy mandates or specific information about how each club is handling social-network issues. Still, BGCA does offer guidance to its various units.

"We do provide a Web site, YNet, which is public and secure. It is fully monitored by adult staff to ensure proper behavior," Hill said.

The secure youth site, which offers chat services and bulletin boards, verifies membership among kids before allowing social networking features. It launched late last year.

"This is our little way to give them social networking features," Hill added.

As for Columbus Park BGCA, Barajas said that it is currently scouting around for technology to block access to MySpace and is planning a meeting this summer with local parents to educate them about MySpace usage.

"If kids are using MySpace at clubs, at home is where they're creating their pages," she said.

Send insights or tips on this topic to stefanie.olsen@cnet.com.