Article on kids in MySpace

I was interviewed for a short article on MySpace for the Buffalo News (thanks to David for the reminder). The moral panic was kept to a minimum, I think.

In the article I suggest that parents should be searching the web for their kids’ social spaces, and that this is not the moral equivalent of reading your kids’ diaries. I enjoy talking to reporters because it sometimes sets me off in directions that I might not otherwise take. While it’s not so helpful to the reporters sometimes, it is helpful to me. One of the things we talked about was the ways in which social software tends to unify identities.

I think most parents feel it is important for kids to have their own spaces. I chatted with a mother who lives and works in a fairly rural area. Her kids can go from their school to her university, cutting through a woods. She thought this was a great way for them to establish their own spaces, and I agree. But the transparent kinds of identity that are often encouraged by blogging and the like seem to be a very different kind of space, even as the pseudonymous nature of many massively multiplayer environments seems to encourage such separate spaces.