It's hard to do work in this space, social media and related topics, and not be very aware of the standard public perception of MySpace and by extension other social network sites.
It's clear that many younger people enjoy expressing themselves on sites like these, but a casual scan of the news finds stories about online predators, identitfy theft, and other unsavory activity.
It is probably worthy of a well-done position paper, the topic of social network sites and their impact on a personal level. Until we come up with that, we've got a little something that might help.
Young people are in a particularly vulnerable place, when it comes to social network sites. Parents often don't have the background or experience to even begin a discussion with their teens about MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, or and of the other sites in the host of popular social network applications.
We've developed a contract, something for teens and parents to read, review and agree to together. We plan on revising this as time moves forward and the particulars change; but for now, please use it, distribute it, and send us feedback for how we might make it better.
