Within the last five years, two social networks has emerged in the cyber space that most teens know today, whether it be from signing themselves up or just hearing about it from their friends.

Myspace and Facebook are two of the biggest websites that draw teens in like a fly to a spider’s web or like a bug to bug zapper. The only problem with this is, how safe is it and who’s to blame for lack of safety?
 
We’ve all seen and heard about it on the news. Another teenaged girl assumes she is talking to a guy her age with the same interests, she go to meet him and he turns out to be an older man who should be considered a sexual predator. Once the damage has been done to this girl, whether it be physical or emotional, her parents quickly make haste to call the police and blame Myspace for the entire issue.

But why is it Myspace’s place to take full responsibility for the act when really, it’s the parent’s fault for allowing them to be online without a parent’s supervision? Sometimes though, it’s not always violent acts that are a wake up call for us.

By now, we must all have heard of Megan Meier. The name might not be fresh in our minds, but the act was something that most can’t forget. A 13-year old girl who had thought she was speaking to a handsome guy within her neighborhood about all the problems in her life, when in fact it was actually an older woman within Meier’s neighborhood who was upset that Meier wasn’t interested in being friends with her daughter. The woman strung Meier along until she finally tried to end the ‘relationship’ suddenly by stating that the world would be better off without her. As a result of this message, Meier was found hanging in her closet and attempts to revive her were unsuccessful. The woman who had committed these acts faced no punishment.

But it’s not only Myspace that is luring people into it’s trap, Facebook is now facing controversy over teachers being on the website in order to keep up with their students. Students are saying that they feel as if they are constantly on surveillance when their teachers follow them to Facebook, but the teachers think it’s nothing more than a way to get closer to the students without being in the classroom.

According to an article by Ethica Publishing, it is also shown that a few months ago, Facebook had a security problem in which two college students hacked into the system and downloaded over 70,000 profiles, information and more using a code called ‘shell script.’ While this is difficult to do, it can still be done.

One of the biggest controversies that Facebook has is deleting profiles from their site while, in fact, even if an account is deactivated, the information still remains. So even those who would like to escape what they’ve put up on their webpage or would rather just get away from Facebook could still suffer from past mistakes they could have put on the site at one point or time.

Granted, Myspace and Facebook do a fairly good job of getting rid of most sexual predators profiles and does not encourage people to meet face to face, the question still lingers in the air. Who is to blame for all these horrible acts that have happened because of these two websites? The parents, of course.

As parents, it their job to follow what their child is doing on the internet. It is true that your child might consider it snooping and could be upset that you watch their every move, but is your child’s complete and total privacy worth your teenaged son or daughters’ life? Or would you allow them to continue to post horrible messages to other people, get hate mail from people that could affect their mental stability and even attempt to meet a person they think they know from looking at their profile but when they meet face-to-face, it could cost them their life?

Your job as a parent is to protect your child from all the dangers they could face even if it’s only in cyber land. You have to be firm and take control of what your child has to see or who they might be going to meet. It’s not Myspace’ or Facebook’s position to take care of every person that comes onto their site, it’s yours.