Study Says Teens Safer On MySpace Than Parents Think
UPDATED: 12:46 pm EST January 5,
2007
BOCA RATON, Fla. -- A South Florida professor said that teens are safer on MySpace.com than parents think, television station WPBF reported.Criminology professor Sameer Hinduja and his research team at Florida Atlantic University determined the safety of more than 2,400 Myspace profiles of teenagers from across the country."MySpace has received a significant amount of negative attention by the popular media, as well as by parents, teachers, school administrators, counselors and even law enforcement," said Hinduja. "We wanted to collect data to determine how many youth were including identifying information on their MySpace profile pages that a predator could potentially use to locate them."The study documented the number of profiles that included a teen's first name, full name, birth date, telephone number, postal address, e-mail address, instant-messaging screen name, city, state and name of their school. Researchers also looked for evidence of alcohol, tobacco, marijuana or other drug use, as well as photos of teens in swimsuits or underwear.According to the report, 40 percent of teens had set their profiles to private, a setting that only allows friends to view their page.Of the remaining 1,500 profiles, only 4 percent listed instant-messaging contact information and 1 percent listed their e-mail addresses."By and large, kids were very responsible," Hinduja said. "They were being vigilant and being wise in terms of what they were revealing online."The report said that four of the teens included their personal cell phone numbers on their home pages.Hinduja told WPBF that he was concerned over the amount of teens who are still posting provocative pictures or giving away intimate information about their personal lives on the popular social networking site.Some of the findings included:Almost 57 percent of the profiles included at least one photo of the teen, often of themselves with family, friends or people they met at a social gathering. Many others provided detailed descriptions of their personal appearance. Almost 40 percent of the profiles included the youth's first name, and about 9 percent included their full name. About 81 percent of the youth included the name of the city in which they live, and another 28 percent named the school they attend. About 4 percent included their instant-messaging name, and 1 percent included their e-mail address. About 18 percent of the sites included evidence of alcohol use, 7 percent included evidence of tobacco use and 2 percent included evidence of marijuana use. Nearly 20 percent of the profiles included profanity, and almost 33 percent of the sites included swear words in the posted comments.
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