Parents on MySpace

Posted on May 4, 2006

Catherine Saillant, a journalist at the L.A. Times has an article called Moms on MySpace that tells the story of her dealings with her daughter's MySpace lifestyle. Catherine called seeing what Taylor, her 13-year-old daughter, and her friends were doing on MySpace more difficult than covering subjects like murders and airplane crashes.

Here's a bulletin I recently found posted to her site:
"OMG! Add this hott guy! He will whore the first 20 people added to his friends list Add him! You can do it in his van!"
Loosely translated, the teenage girl was "pimping" a teenage boy, shown smooching his guitar, as a potential new friend -- or more -- for my daughter. If Taylor added him to her MySpace "friends" list, the tousled-hair teen would be able to look at her Web site and send messages to her.
The soliciting girl made the pitch to all 245 of her own "friends" with a simple keystroke.
In the MySpace world, this is called a "whore code." It's a mild -- very mild -- example of the coarse language and often profane messages that are plastered all over the social networking site like graffiti on bathroom walls.

Saillant's initial reaction was to shut down her daughter's MySpace account.

This is how she responded: "I'm really mad because it feels like you're saying I can't talk to my friends anymore. On MySpace, I get to talk to my friends and see people I don't see a lot. You get to keep in touch with everyone, and it's fun. You took away my fun!"

But Saillant's sister intervened and helped Saillant set up a MySpace account of her own so they correspond and observe Taylor's MySpace activity.

What if I allowed Taylor to maintain a page while keeping a close eye on it? I would join it too so I could become familiar with the site's benefits and drawbacks.
So I typed out the contract, and Taylor enthusiastically signed it. She created an account for me and assigned me a URL, www.myspace.com/im(underscore)a(underscore)cool(underscore)mom, that reflected the giddiness of our truce.
Taylor was thrilled by this turn of events: "Yeah! I can't believe you're letting me do it. I guess it's OK that I have to sign this thing. I don't want you supervising me. I think I can do it on my own. But I'm glad you let me have my own page. It's a generous thing for you to do."

The family MySpace bonding lasted a while -- until Taylor posted a picture that her mother did not approve of.

Taylor had posted shots of herself and two other girls giving a one-fingered salute. I couldn't believe that she would post the photos knowing that I was looking over her shoulder. What was she thinking?
This is what she was thinking, Taylor said: "I was like, 'Should I do this? I don't know.' But I thought you wouldn't care because I didn't say anything on them. They were just pictures. And (the two other girls) already had them up on their pages."

This was the end of Taylor's MySpace account until she turns 14. Services like Facebook and MySpace are defintely something new for parents to deal with. It sounds like the parent-child interactions are most difficult with the younger kids who want to grow up way too fast.