Media Updates

MySpace and Debates over Social Networking Software

By Leslie Regan Shade
November 9, 2005

MySpace - the web-based social networking site popular with teenagers and young adults – has fueled intense debate, especially in the United States, about how youth should be protected from potential illegal and harmful content or people they could encounter online. Amidst a flurry of media reports about MySpace, legislation has been introduced in the U.S. (The Deleting Online Predators Act) that seeks to limit access to social networking spaces for youth. Specifically, DOPA requires schools and libraries that receive federal funding from the E-rate subsidies to prohibit access to any social networking sites. Critics contend that the concerns about MySpace are yet another example of moral panics when it come to children and media issues.

Social networking spaces are web spaces where individuals can create their own online presence for uploading photos and profiles of themselves; within the larger web community users are encouraged to be interactive via posting lists of fellow users on their friends section, writing within the comments section, and letting other users link to their own spaces. The most popular spaces for youth include MySpace.com, Xanga.com, LiveJournal.com, and FaceBook.com. Fueled by the cheapness and ubiquity of digital cameras and cell-phone cameras, these web spaces have also become lucrative; in July 2005 Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation purchased MySpace.com for an estimated $649M USD. February 2006 statistics claim that MySpace has 89 million users since its origins in 2003. Furthermore, it is claimed that 150,000 new accounts are created every day, and its user population is equivalent to the 12th largest country in the world (Rosen 2006). MySpace now outranks Google for page views – ten percent of all advertising impressions across the Internet occur on MySpace, which is double that of Google (MySpace: Design Anarchy That Works, 2006).

Youth are avid users of social networking spaces, finding it a robust, innovative, and attractive method of communicating online to their friends and peers. Rosen’s study of Los Angeles area MySpacers revealed that “the typical MySpacer has about 200 ‘friends’ with approximately 75 labeled as ‘close friends,’ many of whom they have never met” (Rosen, June 2006, ‘Adolescents…,’ p. 2). The average time spent on MySpace is 5 days a week and 2 hours a day, with uses including IM, e-mail, and posting and reading bulletins. Combating pervasive negative media coverage of MySpace, Rosen asserts that MySpace offers positive benefits for teens: “more support from friends, more honest communication and less shyness both on and off MySpace”, and “a forum for teenagers to develop a sense of their personal identity” (ibid, p.5-6).

However, coverage in the mainstream media has focused on exposure of MySpace users to unsavory and illegal content, including terrorist content, criminal activities and sexual content and sexual predators. Amidst this media reports arose The Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA). DOPA can be seen as yet another variation on legislation developed to protect minors from offensive, illegal, and sexual content and sexual exploitation. However, critics of DOPA argue that the legislation will create an even more pervasive digital divide amongst those children and youth that have internet access in their homes and those that can only access the internet through their schools, public libraries, or community centres. DOPA will not only force children and youth to access certain internet spaces without adequate adult supervision in schools and libraries and censor constitutionally protected speech, it will also exacerbate the ‘participation gap’ amongst youth using the internet, particularly for civic participation (American Library Association, 2006; Center for Democracy and Technology, 2006; Jenkins, 2006).

DOPA passed in the US House of Representatives in July 2006 and now moves on to the U.S. Congress, where it will be debated in the Fall 2006.

References and Further Reading

American Library Association. (2006). DOPA Information. Retrieved August 20, 2006 from http://www.ala.org/ala/washoff/WOissues/techinttele/dopa/DOPA.htm

Boyd, D. (February 19, 2006). Identity production in a networked culture: Why youth heart MySpace". Paper given at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Retrieved August 20, 2006 from http://www.danah.org/papers/AAAS2006.html

Center for Democracy and Technology. (August 11, 2006). CDT Analysis: Deleting Online Predators Act. Retrieved August 23, 2006 from http://www.cdt.org/headlines/925

Deleting Online Predators Act

Fass, A. (May 8, 2006). TheirSpace.com. Forbes, 177(10), 122-124.

Hempel, J. and P. Lehman. (December 12, 2005). The MySpace generation. Business Week, Issue 3963.

Jenkins, H. (August 2006). Four Ways to Kill MySpace. [blog] Retrieved August 25, 2006 from http://www.henryjenkins.org/2006/08/four_ways_to_kill_myspace.html

MySpace: Design anarchy that works. (January 3, 2006). Business Week Online.

Oser, C. (2006, February 21). MySpace: big audience, big risks. Advertising Age. Retrieved online April 13, 2006 from http://adage.com/article?article_id=48592

Police charge alleged sexual predator disguised on MySpace as gay. (July 12, 2006). Canadian Press Newswire.

Reiss, S. (July 2006). His Space. Wired, 142-147; 164.

Rosen, L. D. (June 2006). Adolescents in MySpace: Identity formation, friendship, and sexual predators. Retrieved August 15, 2006 from http://www.csudh.edu/psych/lrosen.htm

Rosen, L.S. (June 2006). Sexual predators on MySpace: A deeper look at teens being stalked or approached for sexual liaisons. Short report 2006-01. Retrieved August 15, 2006 from http://www.csudh.edu/psych/lrosen.htm

Williams, A. (August 28, 2005). Do you MySpace? The New York Times.

Williams, A. (February 19, 2006). Here I am taking my own picture. The New York Times.

Yang, J.L. (July 10, 2006). Can this man make MySpace safe for kids? Fortune, 154(1), 32.

Zeller, T. (November 3, 2005). For U.S. teenagers, life is an open web log. International Herald Tribune.