Saturday, April 19, 2008

What is Myspace and why are children interested in it?

According to Wikipedia, the definition of myspace is as follows:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MySpace

MySpace is a popular social networking website offering an interactive, user-submitted network of friends, personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, music and videos for teenagers and adults internationally.

The following is how Wikipedia defines social network service:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network_service#Social_networks_for_social_good

A social network service uses software to build online social networks for communities of people who share interests and activities or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. Most services are primarily web-based and provide a collection of various ways for users to interact, such as chat, messaging, email, video, voice chat, file sharing, blogging, discussion groups, and so on. Social networking has revolutionized the way we communicate and share information with one another in today's society. Various social networking websites are being used by millions of people everyday on a regular basis and it now seems that social networking is a part of everyday life.

Networking is a fairly common word for 5th grade students. They understand it as a place they can go to talk with other kids. Networking means communication with others through a source like Facebook or MySpace.


UNFORTUNATELY:

Fourth and fifth grade students do not understand that they are not supposed to have a MySpace page. The legal age for MySpace is 14. This means that our fourth and fifth graders should not have these webpages. Unfortunately, one of the reasons, students get involved in social networking is because they have older brothers, sisters, friends, or family members creating MySpace pages. Therefore, they want to have a MySpace.


THE APPEAL:

Kids can go to MySpace and real quickly start building a Webpage that has music, videos, friends, email, photo sharing, groups, and more. Why wouldn’t they be interested in MySpace!!!! For teenagers, MySpace offers attraction and hours of fun.


Remember Stay Safe:

MySpace allows you to turn off “on line” so no one knows when you are online.

MySpace allows you to hide your friends so others can’t see them.

MySpace allows you to have anyone wishing to “be a friend” make a request and not be automatically added. This way no one can see your complete profile unless they are actually someone you have allowed as a friend.

CAUTION: when building profiles only share a small amount of information. Remember this is for students 14 and older not for our fourth and fifth graders! Do not give out your password to anyone.

9 comments:

random.thoughts said...

Children are interested in it because some kids find it fun to see their friends online. Also young children only get them because usually they have older siblings. Most older siblings do have a Myspace and are usually on it and the younger siblings watch their older sibling and get interested. Then the younger sibling will ask the older sibling "can I have one?" and the older sibling will say "as long as you don't tell mom or dad.", and the younger sibling doesn't know why so the will say "okay." Then everything goes down the drain.

Unknown said...

I agree with everything written in this article wich is why I do not have one. many oter reasons why people have a myspace are because of peer pressure and because thy want to be noticed.

nancy_perez555 said...

I agree with this, most kids that are under 14 want to have a myspace becuase of their friends or family. In my opinion if people wouldnt use myspace to give out personal information, stalk or bully people myspace would be a good technology site and we could actually work as a class in this. It would really rock if people didnt use it for bad things!

nancy_perez555 said...

I agree with this, most kids that are under 14 want to have a myspace becuase of their friends or family. In my opinion if people wouldnt use myspace to give out personal information, stalk or bully people myspace would be a good technology site and we could actually work as a class in this. It would really rock if people didnt use it for bad things!

princesasox said...

i think that kids should be 16 and older to have one cause some kids don't really care what they say on MySpace. They think that just caus e they have a MySpace they wouldn't really have do things like: their homework and study for really important tests like The Iowas but these tests are what sees if u are ready to go up to the next grade level. I think that the parents should really pay attention to what their children are doing. The people that should have one are the ones that get good grades cause those are the people who are going to go into good colleges.

Anonymous said...

To me I don't understand why even though us kids know MySpace is for 14 year old kids and older kids, we still go and get a MySpace. Personally I would never get a MySpace and I never will.

pony said...

i think yhat you really do have to have hight self astem just in case there bully on and i dont have one brcause i really dont think that it is safe and i might acsdently say some thing wrong

Anonymous said...

Kids should be 14 years old to have MySpace page. It's not safe. I know this because my cousin is 14 now, but when she was 13 and a half, she chatted and got his phone # and called him and her mom didn't know she was doing this so everytime he calls, she turns off her phone. She got caught one day and now she doesn't have a cell phone.

princesasox said...

i think that is right to do that myjournal