Talkin’ Bout My(Space) Generation

Talkin’ Bout My(Space) Generation

The unfortunate murder of last week has given a number of people blogging here an opportunity to demonize the MySpace generation yet again.

I decided to take a look at MySpace to see what all the fuss was about.

MySpace and Peachtree City teens are well suited for each other. This is the generation that essentially grew up with the Internets in their homes, remember. Computers to them are just another form of communicating. And communicate they do, particularly since most teens nowadays are considerably more computer-savvy then their parents.

Some technological Luddite parents don’t understand MySpace, so their instinctive reaction is to assume the worst is going to happen to their kids….internet predators, lewd behavior, etc.

Here’s what I’ve decided about MySpace: it’s a tool. Period. It’s an electronic High School hallway for all intents and purposes. (And, I should note, “No one uses MySpace once they go to college, they all go over to Facebook because Facebook requires a college email address to join”….so sayeth a recent college freshman).

MySpace allows kids to do their own thing and decorate their own page…and boy do they ever decorate! Cars, babes, movie hereoes, scantily clad women and some of the most garish sparkling special effects ever seen are found on the backgrounds of these pages. Rampant individualism is the rule here.

Then there are the groups. You can join as many groups as you want, and some of these kids are compulsive joiners. There are groups you’d expect, like “McIntosh High School” and “PTC Folks”. There are some groups you might not expect, like “AP History SUCKS” and “I’ll Hate Starr’s Mill 4ever”.

Did you know Peachtree City has 257 Gangstas? It’s true! It seems that to be a PTC “Gangsta”, you either have to like pot or rap music…perhaps both. There’s a lot more discussion about rap music than pot, though. Some of the most wholesome looking teens you’ll ever see are proud to declare their allegiance to the Gangsta lifestyle. Seems we’ve gone from “greasers” to “hippies” to “punks” to “goth” and now the latest form of rebellion is to be a “gangsta”.

The other features of MySpace are the myriad questionnaires available (By the way, a questionnaire told me that I’m a 37% virgin...Won’t my wife be shocked!) , the ability to upload pictures and the ability to make comments. There are surprisingly few compromising pictures (the one of 22 laughing kids in a hot tub gave me pause though). The comments these kids make to each other might shock the majority of the stuffy bloggers who post here: these kids sure like to use the “F-word”!!

For those parents worried about their child coming afoul of an Internet predator….trust me, these kids know them when they see them. Your kids are NOT on MySpace to make new friends…they use it as a tool to keep in touch with their own existing circle of friends. Meet someone down at the beach with your family last summer? He/she lives in New Jersey? No problem! Chat with him on MySpace!

(I did smile at one girl’s profile: “If you are over 25, NO I do not want to be your friend. You 40 year old creepos go look elsewhere!”)

Frankly, I don’t see any inherent evil in MySpace, despite the gnashing of teeth of a few of the regulars here. It’s little more than a communication tool….I wonder if our great-great-great-grandparents had such similar angst about the telephone back in the infancy of the Bell system?

Finally

Submitted by mhsxc07 on Sun, 08/20/2006 - 12:15pm.

An adult who actually took time to investigate and check out MySpace instead of listening to the drudge sensationalist gruel which is known as "news media"

Teenagers are not stupid. The bottom line is that Myspace is MY SPACE...not "COME STALK ME SPACE"

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People try to put us down....

Submitted by muddle on Tue, 06/27/2006 - 7:41am.

You're clearly correct: MySpace is inocuous in itself--just like the internet in general.

All four of my adult children ("adult children"?="square circles"?) have MySpace pages--each with overlapping networks of friends. They use them to stay in touch and swap baby photos. They've also run across old classmates from the high school they attended in another state.

MySpace originated as a place for bands to trade information and post music. That remains one of its uses. My two sons have a band in N. Georgia, and they have put up a band page with some of their original music.

We lost my father last November to a heart attack. He had become something of an internet addict. I *know* that he would have had a MySpace page up to communicate with my kids--his grandkids. So I've created a page with his name and have scanned in lots of photos of him, which I change periodically. He even has a "blog" space, as he left behind quite a lot of stuff that he had written--essays about his family, a few published articles, etc. It has become a sort of memorial, and my kids visit the site frequently, leaving comments about how they miss him or sharing some memory that they have of him.
I post things there, too: letters written "to" my dad, for the benefit of my kids (and their friends who also knew and loved him). It's very cathartic. I even found music to include on his profile that he almost certainly would have chosen (Chet Atkins).

Though you are perhaps right in saying that these kids aren't typically looking for new friends, there are some precautions that parents should know about.

The most important is that, if they allow their sites to remain public (there is an option to make it private--for invited friends only), they should take care not to post any specific identifying information. I worry about my daughter's space because she posts photos of my two beautiful grandchildren. I've asked her to take care not even to leave clues as to which American town she lives in. Lord knows what whacko might take an obsessive interest from the photos. This isn't paranoia; just reasonable precaution. The worry about, say, a 14-year-old girl navigating the site is that she may not be particularly circumspect when it comes to posting identifying information.

And it goes without saying that, even though the kids may not be seeking new friends (some are, probably), they may be pursued by others. The new friend named "Christi" (with a daisy dotting the final "I") may, in fact, be a 54-year-old pervert. I would suggest that they decline any friend request unless they actually know the sender.

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