Kids, blogs and too much information

Marcy's 13-year-old daughter has a knack for switching computer screens or shutting the laptop when mom walks in the room.  Like in many families, the two often argue about whether mom has the right to see what her daughter is doing online. The conversation is never really resolved.

But a few months ago, Marcy's need to keep up with her daughter's Internet travels took on a new urgency when she found an unfinished message on the screen urging a friend to check out her daughter's picture on a special Web page her daughter had set up.

With that, Marcy made a discovery thousands of parents around the country are making -- teenagers are among the most active Internet bloggers, and many are posting pictures, names, addresses, schools, even phone numbers, almost always without their parent's knowledge.

"It blew me away," said Marcy, who requested her full name not be used.  "And I just lost it. I sat my daughter down and said, 'Do you realize how inappropriate and how dangerous this is? Here's your face. Here's the town you come from. Do you realize how many sick people are out there?' "

To see her daughter's site, Marcy had to sign up with a service named MySpace.com.  When she did, she found her daughter's page, personal information, and pictures. But she also found a list of her daughter's friends, and made another discovery -- almost all of her 8th-grade classmates at George Washington Middle School in suburban Ridgewood, N.J. had pages on MySpace. 

"And their pictures are very provocative," Marcy said. "There's shots with their butt in the air, with their thongs sticking out of it. They squeeze their elbows together to make their boobs look bigger."

One-third of students have blogs
Soon after, Marcy went to the middle school and talked with its technology coordinator, Mary Ellen Handy, who volunteers with WiredSafety.org.  Handy discovered that about one-third of her 250 students have  Internet blogs -- and only about 5 percent of the parents know about it.

"The girls are all made up to look seductive....Parents have no clue this is going on," she said.  "You think your kid is safe because they are in your house in their own bedroom. Who can hurt them when you are guarding the front door? But (the Internet) is a bigger opening than the front door."

FREE VIDEO Too much information MSNBC.com's Bob Sullivan reports on kids and blogging. MSNBC

Blogs and their technology cousins, social networking sites, are all the rage among young Internet users.  About half of all blogs are authored by teenagers, according to a 2003 study by Perseus Development Corp.; and according to comScore Media Metrix, a majority of the top 15 sites visited by teens 17 and under in January 2005 were either blogs or social networking sites.

But it's what's on the sites that concerns Handy and other experts. A study of teenagers' blogs published this year by the Children's Digital Media Center at Georgetown University revealed that kids volunteer far too much information. Two-thirds provide their age and at least their first name; 60 percent offer their location and contact information. One in five offer up their full name.

"I wonder if a lot of the bloggers are ... really cognizant that the whole world can read their blog?" said David Huffaker, who authored the study.

Experts interviewed for this article could not cite a single case of a child predator hunting for and finding a child through a blog. But there are cases of children being lured through other Internet services, such as chat rooms.

"I don't see why pedophiles wouldn't use this tool, if this is where kids are," said Ann Coulier of Net Family News.

Great source of friends
Blogs and community sites are a great source of entertainment and networking for teenagers. High school junior Mary Ellen Handy -- Mary Lou's daughter -- said most of her friends began blogging when they were freshman.

"You can meet a lot of people. I go to an all girls' school, and it's a great way to meet guys from other schools," Mary Lou, who opened her MySpace account at 15, said. While she's attuned to safety issues, "the sad thing is a lot of girls put their addresses, other personal information. So many people don't know what's going on how vulnerable they can be."

Because they need a user name and password to join services like MySpace, experts say that many teenage users assume the site is protected. "But then they put their school name in, or their school team name," said. Anne Collier, editor of NetFamilyNews. "They don't realize somebody could put two and two together and figure out who they are."

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