A proactive way to protect young people from predators on MySpace

My husband is away on business in Florida and he heard an interesting story on the local NPR station about what the Miami Dade Police Department is doing in MySpace. They have actually created their own profile in MySpace. The Department is suggesting to parents that instead of completely preventing their kids from using MySpace, they require them to add the Miami PD as one of their top friends. This way, the PD is easily available by synchronous and asynchronous messaging if a young person is worried about a potential predator but doesn't want to tell their parents. Also, anyone who is friended by the Miami Dade PD will have the PD's badge on their list of friends which may also deter predators.

It is an absolutely hideous/lame profile that is hard to read and required me to scroll to the right and left to see all of the content, but I really do like this idea. Instead of banning MySpace and other social networking software, parents should be more involved in and aware of what their kids are doing and law enforcement should be using the openness of the space as an opportunity to educate and protect young people.

Another thing parents can do to protect their teens from predators in MySpace is to require them to make their profile private to all but their friends. At least then they would have to actually add a predator as a friend before that person could see the teen's profile. I noticed a lot of the profiles of the "friends" of the Miami Dade PD have private profiles.