New age restrictions aim to keep teens away from adults and vice versa on the social-networking site.MySpace today announced heightened security settings aimed at better protecting teens on the popular social networking site, and affording better privacy to members in general.
MySpace members of any age now have the option to keep their profiles private, restricting access to things like personal interests to a private group of friends. The service is also better coordinating advertising based on the user's age, so those sexually charged online dating ads will be reserved for adults.
The most prominent new feature, however, restricts the amount of contact adults can have with users under 16 years old. The security policy requires members over the age of 18 to know at least the e-mail address or first and last name of the teen they're trying to contact.
MySpace has received plenty of bad press—and some lawsuits—for the seemingly laissez-faire attitude about age restrictions and user security. The latest comes from the mother of a 14-year-old girl who was allegedly abducted and sexually assaulted by a 19-year-old she met on MySpace.
But these new security measures will likely do little to keep online predators at bay (though they may allay the fears of naïve parents). For one thing, MySpace has no way of verifying the identities or ages of users, so it's common practice for tweens and preteens (who aren't allowed on MySpace) to sign up and claim to be 99 years old. Likewise, there's still nothing keeping older users from claiming to be much younger.
MySpace isn't alone in this dilemma. Another social networking site, TagWorld, has a similar policy barring adults from communicating with teens. But again, they have no way to police this policy.
Social networking sites are booming right now; MySpace is currently in the top 5 most popular sites in the US. Would users (especially teens) flock as enthusiastically to a site that required jumping through hoops to verify your age and name? And would the attending privacy concerns be worth the extra security? After all, MySpace would have to collect some kind of personal info with which to verify you are who you say you are.
A MySpace representative admitted that the industry doesn't have an effective way of verifying identities and ages, but said it's not for lack of effort.
"MySpace has a lot of visibility, and we're going to continue to explore and figure out solutions that will actually work," the spokesperson continued. "We're spending a lot of time and energy to get parents involved, and that's fundamental. If there isn't fool-proof [identity-verification] technology, people need to use common sense."
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