Comments on: Are kids playing it safe online?

Despite the rap against teens' Net etiquette, attorney Eric J. Sinrod says it's time to re-examine the conventional wisdom.

[Hoser McMoose]

Why 'troubling'?

From the article: "Plus, the fact that practically one-third of online teenagers have been contacted by complete strangers is troubling"

Why exactly is this troubling? The article states that 49% of teens are looking to make new friends on-line, and to make new friends one side MUST make contact with a complete stranger first!

The way they describe it sounds like these 'complete strangers' are some creepy rapists looking for unsuspecting vulnerable kids when in reality it's probably mostly just other kids with similar interests.

[LaPajarita]

Who contacts the teens?

In my experience, the people who contact a new account on MySpace are advertisers. When I set up my account, I got two messages on my email almost immediately saying someone wanted to be my "friend." Of course, I trashed the emails because I had never heard of the alleged people. The survey should have had an additional question: of those strangers who contacted you, how many turned out to be advertisers?

BTW, my account photo is two loaves of bread, my email address is a defunct Webmail address that is still active, but which I rarely use.

[LaPajarita]

forgot to mention...

all my 'personal' information is bogus. I assume that is true for most social network accounts.

[oregonnerd]

'parents should educate their children...'

As someone who rather necessarily grew up not using computers, and then began to be primitively computer-literate, at least...

Who the hell will educate the parents?
--Glenn
[pardon my skepticism, Declan; you're a good writer and a better mind]