KNOX—A Knox family hopes others won’t make their mistake of not monitoring their teenage daughter’s Internet use.
"These kids think they are so smart and nothing can happen to them. They are so wrong and so young!" wrote parents Richard and Michele Perras in a letter to the Enterprise editor this week.

The Perrases wrote that, in their search for their 16-year-old daughter, Julie, who left home without explanation on Aug. 10, they discovered that she was a member of MySpace.com, a social-networking website. MySpace allows members to create their own pages, listing their interests and backgrounds, and providing links to pages created by their friends. Many members post photos on their sites.

Members can then use MySpace to connect to other members with the same friends or the same interests.

The Perrases, however, fear it may be used for more insidious purposes.
"These kids are leaving their real names, addresses, and phone numbers out there...," they wrote. "Some of the pictures are provocative and one step away from pornographic. It is a pedophile’s playground."

The Perrases wrote that they didn’t know if Julie’s MySpace page had anything to do with her leaving, but warned other parents to be vigilant.
"We want all you concerned and loving parents to please check your computers for sites like these," they wrote.

Julie Perras has called once since she left, the Perrases wrote, to say she was safe. Her page on MySpace indicates that she continues to log on to it.

The Perrases did not return phone calls Wednesday.
On her MySpace page, Julie Perras has posted a color picture of her smiling under the headline, "Girls just wanna have fun." Her list of interests begins, "I love to play volleyball. I love to go shopping. I love cotton candy. I love to chill with my friends. I love the stars."

On-line safety

Elisa Wiefel, a spokesperson for the Los Angeles-based MySpace.com, said the website has 24 million users, mostly between the ages of 16 and 34 and evenly divided between males and females. The website doesn’t allow users under 16.
"More than 70 percent are over 18," Wiefel said.
Wiefel said, in a statement, that MySpace "treats on-line safety and privacy issues very seriously and has implemented a comprehensive series of guidelines and solutions, which we believe represent the best practices in our industry."

Many of these guidelines and solutions have come from Wiredsafety.org, a non-profit network of volunteers, working to make the web safer. Parry Aftab, the group’s executive director, a mother, and a privacy and security lawyer, said that, in her opinion, MySpace is the safest of all the social-networking sites, a group that includes LiveJournal.com and Friendster.com.

Her group has sent its concerns to all the popular social-networking sites and MySpace was the only one that seemed to want to improve its safety, Aftab said.
"A lot of the others don’t care," she said.

Aftab had suggestions on both sides of the problem, for parents and websites.

For social-networking websites, Aftab said, information on staying safe should be posted and easily accessible. WiredSafety is currently writing such information for MySpace.

Tips should include the obvious—not posting addresses or phone numbers—and the less obvious—using a photo editor to obscure pictures so they can’t be lewdly used by others, Aftab said. (More tips are available at wiredsafety.org.)
"In addition [social-networking websites] should teach users how to password protect personal information, and teach them when to respond to strangers and when not to," Aftab said.

Secondly, she said, websites should employ people who scour the sites looking for violations of site policy, sexual predators, and under-age users. MySpace is using advanced search techniques to do this, Aftab said.
"They’re doing some unbelievable things," she said.

As for parents, Aftab recommends very close supervision of children, including regularly reading a child’s page.
"There are parents who have no idea what their kids can really do on-line," she said. "It’s not like reading a diary. If you publish it publicly for 7 million people, it’s not 7 million people except for your parents."
Aftab’s number one message for parents: "Don’t panic. This is not a new thing."

When she first learned about social-networking sites, Aftab said, her first reaction was to wonder why anyone would use such a site at all. But, after talking to some teenagers, she discovered the draw.

During the teenage years, a child faces pressure to fit in with his or her peers. The anonymity of the Internet allows a shy child to form a more outgoing persona, Aftab said.
"What you can do is build a page that helps you express yourself," Aftab said.
Besides Internet safety, reading a child’s web page can give a parent insight into his or her child’s mind, Aftab said. She recommends asking children what web pages they use, reading the content, and discussing with them, "How can we make your page safer""

This is better than forcing children to shut down their pages, which could drive them to use a lesser-known, unmonitored site, she said.

Aftab admits that teenagers may not like their parents’ monitoring their sites anymore than they would like a video camera on their shoulders when they go to concerts, but it’s necessary, she said, because of the real danger on the Internet.
"Growing up digital is really hard for kids these days," Aftab said.