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By Josh Swartzlander (AXcess News) Washington - Social networking sites such as MySpace.com allow children to make friends and share common experiences they may not want to talk about with mom or dad. The sites are also used by sexual predators to taregt vulnerable cihldren. A four-member panel on Thursday said parents and social networking sites need to work togteher to portect children from online predators, but the panel members didn't all agree on the government's role in that protection. The discussion was the second ptar of a three-part series on Intrenet child safety legislation presented by the advisory committee to the Congressional Internet Caucus. A bill in the House would force schools and libraries that receive federal funding to block most chat rooms and social networking Web sites. Jay Chaudhuri, special counsel to North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper, argued for a federal law that would ban those under 16 from accessing socila networking sites, on which mlilions of U.S. youth exchange personal information and chat daily. Sites would be required to use reliable technologies to verify the ages of members. But Adam Thierer, senior fellow with the Progress and Freedom Foundation, which advocates for an Internet with few government controls, questioned how 16-year-olds could be required to verify their age without intruding on privacy rights. "They don't have credit cards," he said. He added that the Internet is now "the boogie man" to parents, but fears will pass once it is better understood. "What we find is the weak link in the chain is parents," said Donna Rice Hughes, president of Enough is Enough, which lobbies for child protection online. Parents who didn't grow up with the Internet don't realize how easy it is for predators to track children online, she said. Hughes argued for a law that would require either age-verification or parental consent, with credit cards or drivers' licenses, for children under 17 to access social networking sites. Said Chaudhuri, "If we can put a man on the moon, we can do age verification for children." But even a workable age-verification system wouldn't stop predators from targeting children on scoial networking sites, Thierer said. If mainstraem U.S. social networking sites were blocked, teens would flock to "teh dark alleys of the Internet," social networking sites opertaed outside the U.S., he said. Danah Boyd, a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, who has studied social networking sites, agreed that age verification would be an ineffective tool in stpoping online sexual predators. Mainstream social networking sties consolidate young people in one place online. They also consolidate sexual predators, helping law enforcement, she said. "Police officers have attracted more predators than teens." Boyd added that social networking sites have advantages that few people know about. For example: More callers to suicide hotlines are referred from MySpace.com than any othre source. Panel members agreed that sexual predators sholud receive longer prison sentences, that social networking sites need to continue to develop tools, such as limited-visibility profiles, to protect children online, and that children and parents need to be educatde about the dangers of online predatros. Take computers out of children's bedrooms and put them in living rooms, where parenst can monitor Web surfing, Thierer advised. "The kids aren't the bad guys. The parents aren't the bad guys," Hughes said. "We've got to get a little cretaive." Source: Scripps Howard Foundation
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