Parents learn Myspace dangers

It can be hard for parents to keep up with their kids ? especially on the Internet.

As social networking Web sites like MySpace.com grow increasingly popular, Huntington Beach schools are holding workshops to make sure parents stay informed of possible dangers to their children.

“We had a cry out [from parents] to help them actually learn what their child already knows, so they can know how to protect their children from Internet predators,” Edison High School Principal D’liese Melendrez said.

Tonight at 7, Edison will host a panel discussion and multimedia presentation by the Orange County Sheriff’s Department about Santa Monica-based MySpace.com.

The panel will include a clinical psychologist, Huntington Beach Police School Officer Steve Sogisti and Edison’s Assistant Principal Newell Williams.

Edison isn’t the only school taking this approach.

On May 4, Andi Querry of the Newport Beach Police Department talked to Pegasus School parents about the possible dangers of such sites, especially MySpace, which has over 77 million registered users and was purchased last year for nearly $600 million by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.

Querry’s workshop told parents how to surf through the site and others like it and look for potentially dangerous information their children might be revealing.

“I had tried to get on MySpace and was unable to do it,” said Newport Beach resident Donna Neff, a parent who attended the Pegasus School meeting.

Neff, who said her 13-year-old daughter has yet to become a member of any social networking sites, wanted as much information as possible to keep her safe when the time comes. She said she hadn’t thought about all the dangers Querry mentioned.

“I hadn’t really thought of the identity theft problem,” Neff said. “The financial ramifications of it for the whole family was the most eye-opening.”

Querry also talked to parents about YFly.com ? originally created just for teens as a safe place to make friends ? and TagWorld.com.

Querry said a major problem she sees with the sites is that kids give out too much personal information, such as their last names, where they go to school and the cities where they live.

“I think many people and their kids have a false concept of what it’s really about, and so they’re [telling] their parents that not everybody can see the information,” she said. “The truth is that it’s out there for everyone to see, good or bad.”

MySpace has tried to address these safety concerns recently by hiring extra staff responsible for monitoring the site for inappropriate pages, Querry said.

“I went there on a tour a couple weeks ago, and they look for kids that are lying about their age or people that are posing as kids,” Querry said. “If it doesn’t match up, they get rid of the person.”

She said they also monitor every video that is posted by a user before it appears on the site.

MySpace.com officials were unable to be reached for comment, but there is a link on the MySpace home page to safety and parent tips.

Querry said kids often are surprised to learn their parents have seen what they write on the site.

“They would just die to know you were reading this,” Querry said as she showed the pages of a few local girls.

“It can be really useful, but obviously people have used it in other dangerous ways,” she added.